


Divergence (The One Less Traveled By)

by maisierita



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: (eventually) - Freeform, AU, Episode Related, M/M, Slash, Stargate Episode 10.31, the road not taken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5716930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maisierita/pseuds/maisierita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McKay and Sheppard in the universe from SG ep. 10.13, "The Road Not Taken". After Carter returns to her universe, someone's got to finish saving this one from the Ori.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Two roads diverged in a yellow wood_

* * *

Rodney is in the lab — the pathetic, under-furnished, underfunded, ugly lab — staring morosely at the Ancient device on the lab table. (In truth, the lab is neither under-furnished nor underfunded, but it is still pathetic and ugly and built into an underground mountain, and Rodney loathes every inch of it.) Merlin's device sits on the table, lifeless and silent. _Merlin’s_ device. Apparently Merlin was an Ancient. Ten years ago that would have been shocking, especially as he hadn't known what an Ancient was back then, but now it's just another little blip in the farce he likes to call his life.

The device is placid, utterly inert and therefore utterly useless, except perhaps as a particularly large, ugly paperweight. Despite promises of salvation, it is entirely failing to offer a concrete method for defeating the Ori. Fortunately Rodney has been able to successfully reproduce Colonel Carter's work to put the entire planet out of phase, but even that produces no satisfaction, because Carter had left him her notes, which, Carter being Carter, were more or less a step-by-step instruction manual. Any idiot could have done that, even Kavanaugh.

Rodney flips through Carter’s notes again, but inspiration stubbornly refuses to strike despite the flawless array of equations marching neatly across the page. This Colonel Carter is just as brilliant as his own is — as his own _was_. And ouch, that stings, a little burst of hurt and loss and grief for a woman he'd thought he never wanted to see again. Of course that was when she was alive and well and insufferable, and the fact that he feels differently now that she’s dead irritates him even more.

Meanwhile, the device is still mocking him in its own inorganic way, while Colonel Carter's moralistic blathering about their responsibility to the rest of the universe continues to echo in his ears. Rodney can't sleep now, has not slept in days, because now, thanks to Carter, he keeps thinking of all the millions of people out there in the galaxy who can't escape the Ori simply by phasing out of existence. This makes him feel guilty for being relatively safe and secure, which is ludicrous beyond all common sense, but the feeling sits there in his gut nonetheless, heavy and unfamiliar and unpleasant.

So he's been staring at the device in this dismal lab, wondering if it can't be used as a offensive weapon instead of a strictly defensive mechanism. It's a remarkably effective way to put the planet out of phase, but it only solves _their_ problem. If he could put the Ori out of phase, it'd solve everyone's problem.

Which might mean he'd get his life back. He wants his life back. He likes his life. Or had liked it, up until about two weeks ago. Now his life is full of bad coffee and annoying rules and pointless interviews and an Ancient device that is as stubborn as any non-sentient machine could possibly be.

"Hey," a voice says, nasal and lazy, "Evan, are you ready yet — oh. You're not Evan."

"No," Rodney says irritably. "I am not. Who's Evan?"

"Evan Lorne?" the guy says, coming into the room and peering at Merlin's device interestedly.His gaze on Rodney is decidedly less interested. "Head of SG1? Walter said he was down here."

"Well," Rodney says with a grin that isn't much of one, "he's not. So," he waves his hand in a little shooing motion towards the door, "thanks for stopping by. Close the door on your way out."

The guy ignores him and points to the device. "What's that?"

"That," Rodney says witheringly, "is supremely classified. You could probably be shot for even being in here."

The guy does not wither. He raises an eyebrow and crosses his arms across his chest, leaning one hip against the table, looking for all the world like he is settling in. "I kind of doubt it. My clearance is pretty high."

Rodney is frustrated. He has spent a good deal of day being frustrated. He has spent a good deal of his _month_ being frustrated, come to think of it. It does not make him warm towards his fellow man, come-hither slouch or no. He just wants to be left alone with the recalcitrant device so he can break it to his will, satanic origins be damned. "Look, soldier whoever you are, I'm sure you were hot stuff in high school, but-"

"First of all," the guy says pleasantly, "it's airman, not soldier. Except it’s Major, not airman. Second of all, I was a geek in high school and I hung out with the science club, so not so much with the hot stuff. And third of all, I—"

"Third of all, I don't care," Rodney says. "Just go. Away." He waves his hand in dismissal.

"Yeah," the guys says, still infuriatingly mellow and continuing to infringe on Rodney’s space. "But, no. I don't think so. Who are you, anyway? This whole corridor is restricted." His smile remains pleasant, but there's a glint of steel in his eyes, and his hand is hovering dangerously close to his thigh holster.

Rodney rolls his eyes, because really, obvious displays of aggression are so much testosterone posing, and after several weeks in the SGC, he’s had more than enough of that. It is why he has never wanted to work directly with the military, but has always had his underlings deal with the defense contracts. "Are you going to shoot me in the lab? Near this highly volatile Ancient device? Because it's quite possible that it will blow up the planet."

"Uh huh," the guy says. "Because Ancient devices do that a lot. Blow up, I mean. You know, spontaneously."

"If you _shoot_ at it-"

"Ancient devices," the guys says firmly, "are self-shielded. If I shot it, the only real danger is that the bullet might ricochet and hit someone else.” He grins, wide and full of perfect teeth. “Like you."

"Consider me appropriately intimidated," Rodney snaps. He pulls his ID badge from his pocket and slams it down on the table. "There. I have clearance. Satisfied? Now please, seriously, just get out of my lab and find your friend Lonny."

"Lorne," the guy corrects absently. He's actually examining Rodney's badge, which he’s had the nerve to pick up and examine, like Rodney might be lying. Rodney is mildly insulted — or would be, if he could be bothered to care what the guy thinks. Airman Guy squints at the ID badge a little, then looks up at Rodney's face, mouth twisted, staring intently in a way that makes Rodney feel self-conscious and uncomfortable.

"Yes, yes, terrible picture, I know. It's chronic. I can never figure out how to smile so it doesn’t look horrible You should see my wedding photos. Well, no, you shouldn't, and anyway I threw them out after the divorce, so you couldn't, regardless."

The guy gives him a weird look, then tosses the badge back on the table. "You're Rodney McKay?"

"I presume," Rodney says, "that's a hypothetical question, since you just spent 30 seconds scrutinizing my ID."

"The dot com guy?"

"Ex-dot com guy." No, he is not bitter at _all_. "Now I'm the president's personal advisor."

"Huh," the guy says. "I heard a rumor they’d brought in some hot shot astrophysics geek to work on Merlin’s device and other Ancient tech. That’d be you, I guess.”

Rodney bristles slightly. “Hot shot astrophysics geek? I’m flattered and insulted all at the same time.”

The guy grins, and it's genuine this time, startling and warm, and holds out a hand across the table. "John Sheppard."

Rodney takes his hand out of instinct. Sheppard's grip is firm and strong, but not aggressive.

"Sheppard," Rodney muses. "Sheppard. Hey, you're the guy with the gene I’ve heard about."

Sheppard winces. "Yeah, I suppose."

"I thought you'd be in Area 51."

"With the chair?" Sheppard shrugs. "No ZPM to power it up, so there’s nothing for me to do there. They've got me out hunting for Ancient tech."

"Off-world?" Rodney's intrigued. He knows Sam has been — _had_ been — off-world several times, but they had never talked about it before she ... before she died ... and he hasn't had time since getting here to talk to anyone else about it either.

"Yeah," Sheppard says. He rubs at the back of his neck. "It's not as exciting as you might think. There's a lot of mud, and I swear to god, I get poison ivy or the alien equivalent every other day. Plus there are all these godawful ceremonies."

"Ceremonies? For what, awards?"

Sheppard snorts. "No. Jesus, I wish. No, it's like, 'oh, honored visitor from the other side of the ring, we welcome you to our humble village, please share our moldy bread and disgusting tea so that we may pledge our lifelong friendship.' But then five minutes later they start shooting at us. Or, you know, trying to have our babies."

Rodney blinks. He can't help it. "Really?"

"Totally not as sexy as it sounds, trust me."

"Oh," Rodney sighs. "Because on Star Trek, the aliens were always hot."

"Yeah," Sheppard says. "But in real life, they're mostly just unwashed and malnourished. I dunno. I think SG1 gets all the missions with the hot babes." He shifts against the table. "So are they going to put you on a gate team? SG1 needs a scientist, now that Carter's dead."

Some kind of expression crosses Rodney's face; he can't help it, it's involuntary, but he'd have to be inhuman not to react to that, and despite the rumors, he’s not actually an android. Sheppard curses when he realizes. "Shit. You knew her. I’m sorry.”

"It’s okay," Rodney manages. "It’s just, we were, uh, married. Once, I mean. Not now. I mean, we got divorced a few years back."

"Oh," Sheppard says. He looks a little thrown. "I had no idea. I, uh, I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thanks,” Rodney says. “But you don’t need to ... I mean, it’s not my loss, really. I mean, I’m sorry she’s dead and all, but ... it’s ... it’s just weird, mostly. Honestly, I hadn't thought about her in a long time. But then I saw her on the news and I sort of remembered what it was like, in the beginning. But actually, we didn't really get along all that well. She was kind of arrogant and condescending."

Sheppard stares at him for a minute, then says slowly, "Oh. You're serious."

"Of course I'm serious!"

"Just because," Sheppard says, "it seems like you might have, uh, been a good match."

"We were," Rodney says. "For about a year. After that, not really very much. Turns out she wasn't my type."

"Not your type?" Sheppard looks at him like he's a little crazy, which, Rodney admits, he might be. "She was tall, blonde, gorgeous and brilliant. What part of that is not your type?"

"The part where she's a woman," Rodney says. "Big life-changing moment for me, anger and obscenities from her. Much angst ensued, ritual smashing of our china, etc, etc. It was very much the dramatic scene."

“I can imagine,” Sheppard says. But then his radio goes off and Rodney turns back to the device — still stubborn and inert — and Sheppard throws a “Catch you later, McKay,” over his shoulder as he leaves.

* * *

 The thing is, Sheppard’s not just that guy with the gene, he’s That Guy With The Gene, and he hates being at the SGC almost as much as Rodney does. Besides the gaggle of dazzled Ancient-tech groupies who follow him around asking him to “touch this, please,” there’s a bunch of bureaucrats with OCD who follow him around with clipboards and hand pick all his missions so he doesn’t get himself accidentally killed.

SG-1 goes on all the first contact missions; SG-10, Sheppard’s team, only goes after the planet has been vetted and cleared and certified as not-too-hazardous. This doesn’t mean that Sheppard doesn’t get occasionally shot at or involved in some bizarre fertility ritual, but mostly his missions are pretty milk-run. “Boring,” Sheppard clarifies, lying in the infirmary bed covered in pink hydrocortisone paste — he had not been exaggerating about the frequency with which he contracts alien poison ivy — “our missions are boring. Seriously, McKay, I think the only reason they let me off-world at all is because they’re afraid I’ll blow up the SGC if they try to keep me here."

“Hmmm,” Rodney says, because blowing up the SGC is a possibility he hasn’t considered, and it’s definitely something to think about, if it would get him back to his real life. Sheppard is the only thing about the SGC that makes working here tolerable; the days he is off-world are insufferably long and tedious. Rodney has never played well with others, but he still likes having people around, if only to bring him coffee and muffins. Long days spent locked alone in a dreary lab hold no appeal, even if he’s working on Ancient technology and theoretical physics so advanced that even he’s finding it a challenge to keep up.

When Sheppard’s there, hiding out in Rodney’s lab — “I am not hiding!” Sheppard insists. “It’s called  making a strategic retreat” — Rodney gets ten times more work done. Rodney does not quite understand the mechanics of this, because it’s not like Sheppard helps out; he just sits there on a stool, filling out interminable paperwork and AARs (“How I Didn’t Cause an Intergalactic Incident Today” reports, Sheppard says), making really bad jokes, and demonstrating his freakish savant ability to calculate numbers in his head.

“23.643. And still useless,” Sheppard says, leaning back in his chair and polishing his gun. Again. His love affair with his firearm is frankly a little disturbing. “What good does it do me to be able to calculate square roots in my head? I want to fly planes.” This is said in a slow, whiny drawl, petulant in a manner Rodney secretly thinks is only acceptable coming from people named McKay. However, Sheppard gets a free pass because Rodney completely understands Sheppard’s need to bitch and stamp his foot and say, “How did this get to be my life?”

Rodney thinks going off-world would be cool enough to make up for not flying planes, but to Sheppard going off-world lost any glamour the first time he came home covered in red welts. Or maybe it was the time he’d burst through the gate wearing the alien equivalent of a lei, which apparently, Sheppard had recounted, laughing about it now, though reportedly not at the time, meant that he’d married the chief’s daughter without knowing it. (Realistically, it was probably the red welts that did it.)

“So,” Sheppard says one day, poking lethargically at the wires Rodney has hooked up to Merlin’s device, “the big gay epiphany. How’d that go down?”

Rodney straightens up, the bones in his neck creaking ominously. “I already told you. Sam smashed the china, called me several very nasty names, and stormed out. About what you’d expect.”

Sheppard shrugs. “I don’t know what I’d expect.” He fiddles with the wire until Rodney slaps his hand away. “Did you know you were gay when you married her?”  
  
“Of course not!” Rodney says indignantly. “I loved her! I thought I was straight!”

“Yeah, see,” Sheppard says, “that’s a little weird. I mean, most people figure out their sexuality in their teens. I mean, I can understand it if you were confused, but—“

“I wasn’t confused. There was no confusion. I was perfectly straight. Until I wasn’t.”

“Huh,” says Sheppard, and seems content to let the conversation drop.

* * *

 Sheppard often looks at Rodney like he can’t quite figure him out. Rodney doesn’t understand this. He is, has always been, an open book. Smarter than everyone else, maybe, but still easy to read, easy to figure. But Rodney often catches Sheppard staring at him oddly, brow creased, like he’s trying to pin something down, some facet of Rodney’s personality that he can’t quite grasp.

“What?” Rodney finally snaps one day, after catching Sheppard staring at him for the billionth time. “What is it? Do I have something stuck in my teeth?”

Sheppard cocks his head to one side; he appears to actually be looking. “No, not that I can tell.”

“Then what is with all the staring?”

Sheppard does not blush, or look remotely embarrassed, or even disconcerted. He just shrugs. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry? Don’t just say ‘sorry.’ If there is something about me that is worthy of such intense scrutiny, I think I deserve to know about it.”

“It’s nothing,” Sheppard says. “It’s just—”  and now he does look a little embarrassed — Rodney can tell, because Sheppard is rubbing the back of his neck — “everyone says you’re kind of a jerk.”

“How is this cause for staring?”  
  
Sheppard laughs. “I don’t think you’re a jerk, McKay. I’m just trying to figure out why everyone else does.”

“Probably because I am,” Rodney says. “Seriously. I’m arrogant, condescending and self-centered.”

“Well, yeah,” Sheppard says. “But you’re not a jerk. You’re honest but not intentionally cruel. You’re at least as hard on yourself as you are on everyone else. And you let me hang out here. You even brought me chocolate in the infirmary.”

“Oh,” Rodney says uncomfortably. “Well, that’s different.”

“Yeah? How’s it different?”

“Well,” Rodney says, “I like you. In a totally platonic, non-threatening way, so don’t have a big homophobic freakout and stop coming by. You’re the only reason I have not done something drastic to this place.”

Sheppard grins and spins happily on his stool. “I’m flattered.”

“Just don’t spread it around,” Rodney says. “I don’t want people thinking I’m going soft.”

Sheppard raises his hand. “Scout’s honor.”

* * *

 Sheppard comes in to the lab one day looking harried. “Quick, hide me. Hammond’s coming.”

General Hammond does not seem to like Sheppard. Admittedly, this is difficult to be certain of, as Hammond is far too well-mannered to show obvious dislike or favor, but Sheppard seems convinced of it, and Rodney, upon close observation, has in fact noticed a particular tightness around Hammond's mouth when Sheppard is in the room. This is very perplexing, because as far as Rodney can tell, there is really nothing not to like about Sheppard. Rodney is not alone in this opinion: everyone seems to like him. Well, almost everyone. President Landry is apparently not a big fan of Sheppard's either, but that is only in theory, as the two have never actually met.

"Why would we have?" Sheppard had said, when Rodney had asked. "He's the President. I'm just a pilot. Ex-pilot."

"Not ex," Rodney had said, "just temporarily retired."

"Whatever you want to call it," Sheppard had said bitterly. "Still not flying any planes."

"What you need," Rodney had mused, "is your own spaceship." 

Sheppard had perked up at that, until he decided that even if the SGC found personal spaceships, the bureaucracy would never let him touch one. "Not until they find more people with the gene," Sheppard had sighed, morose again. "I wonder if Beckett will ever figure out how to make that therapy work."

Since Beckett has been pulled aside to work on a possible genetic defense against the Ori, successful completion of the ATA gene therapy project seems unlikely to occur soon.

Sheppard is scouring the lab. "Christ," he says bitterly, "there aren't even any filing cabinets in here."

"You wouldn't fit in a filing cabinet anyway," Rodney says patiently. When Sheppard is in a mood like this, which happens infrequently but is not unheard of, it falls to Rodney to be the voice of reason. This is a change for him, as most of the time he is the voice of panic and hysteria. "You’re skinny enough but way too tall. It's pointless to hide out in here anyway. This is the first place Hammond will look. It's the first place anyone will look."

This is true. Rodney is reasonably certain Sheppard has an office, but you would never know it, because he is always here instead. "My office is small and grey and boring," Sheppard had said one day. "It freaks me out."

Rodney suspects it is not the small and grey part that bothers Sheppard so much as the boring, or the very fact that it’s an _office_. Rodney's own lab may not be the most aesthetic locale, but it is rarely boring and it cannot be mistaken on even the worst day for an office.

"Shit," Sheppard says dejectedly, and collapses onto a stool. This is quite a feat, as the stools are tall and uncomfortable, give Rodney a literal pain in the ass, and at best can be sat gingerly upon. "You're right."

Rodney doesn't bother answering that, because it's sort of a general, indisputable fact of life that Rodney is right about everything. Still, Sheppard's head is now cradled in his arms, face down on the lab table, and he looks so sad and pathetic that Rodney asks, "What's wrong now?" (It’s a common misperception that Rodney has no social skills. The truth is he is can be as socially competent as the next guy; it’s just that he rarely cares enough to go to the trouble.)

"Hammond wants me to go back to PX3-578," Sheppard complains, voice muffled.

"Isn't that the one where you got poison ivy?"

Sheppard lifts his head long enough to glare at Rodney. "Ha very ha," he says. "You're a laugh a minute, McKay."

Rodney is not at all sorry. "What's wrong with PX3-578?" Yet another thing that annoys Rodney about the SGC is its stubborn insistence on using alphanumeric designations instead of names.

Sheppard groans. "Last mission, it rained the entire time we were there. For three days straight. I have never been so wet and muddy in my life. Their main source of food is insects, and they have mandatory morning meditation which requires an hour of sitting cross-legged. In the mud. After a hearty bowl of insect mush."

Rodney grimaces. "It doesn't sound appealing."

"No," Sheppard says. "It really, really doesn't. And yeah, I got poison ivy, except I think it was from the mud."

"Poison mud?"

"Not even remotely funny. It was everywhere, down my pants, in my socks, in my _underwear_."

Rodney flinches, contemplating it. "Ow."

"Tell me about it. And he wants me to go _back_." Sheppard looks up, and his eyes are wild. "I can't do it. I can't. Jesus. Even thinking about it is making me itch. I don't care if there are Ancient ruins there. The stuff's all crap anyway; the Ancients must have taken all the good stuff with them. We haven't found a single useful thing in months."

Rodney shifts on his stool. His left ass cheek is falling asleep. "We found Merlin's device."

"On Earth! And we didn’t even know what it was! It was in a storage closet, wasn’t it? And you don't even need the gene to use it." Sheppard scowls, which is oddly endearing. "I can't fly planes, I'm useless here, and I can't quit. Jesus fuck, my life completely sucks."

"Join the club," Rodney says, now as equally depressed as Sheppard. Neither of them can quit. Rodney's assets are all frozen, and he figures the only chance he has at ever getting any part of his life back under his control is figuring out a way to defeat the Ori, which, considering they are actually ascended Ancients and Rodney is not, seems unlikely. Sheppard's tour of duty has been extended indefinitely, the same as everyone else in the military, but Rodney thinks Sheppard's never getting out of the service anyway, not unless they find a hundred other people with an expression of the gene as strong as his, and that seems very unlikely since they have yet to find even one. Even O’Neill’s was not as strong.

The door slides open while they're both sitting there moping, and Major Lorne walks in, looking very unsurprised to find Sheppard there. "John," he says, and for a minute, Rodney wonders who he's talking to, because Sheppard is always Sheppard in his head, "General Hammond is looking for you."

"Yeah," Sheppard says, "I know." He doesn't make a move to get off his stool. "I don't suppose I could convince you to get SG1 to take the mission?"

Lorne laughs, teeth white and straight and shiny, the very image of the all-American soldier. "To the mud planet? Pass."

"Some friend you are," Sheppard mutters.

"Never claimed to have a heart of gold," Lorne shoots back cheerily. "You want I should head him off for you?"

"No," Sheppard sighs. "He'll find me eventually. If you see him first, tell him I'll head over to his office as soon as I'm done here."

Lorne looks unduly amused by this. "You're never done here. Jeez, if I didn't know you were straight, I'd be getting suspicious. No offense, Doc."

"Hmm?" Rodney looks up like he hasn't been listening. "Oh. None taken."

Lorne nods and spins on his heel. "I'm going to be getting back, then. See you later, John. Dr. McKay."

"Bye, Evan," Sheppard says morosely. After the door shuts, Sheppard drops his head down to the table with a thud. "Crud."

Literally, Rodney thinks, but he doesn't say it, because there is teasing, and there is being cruel. Instead he tries out "John," just to see how it sounds.

"John," he says, feeling it roll hesitantly off his tongue. "John."

Sheppard's head inches up off the table. He eyes Rodney dubiously from under the fringe of his hair. "Yes?"  
  
"Nothing," Rodney says. Then he tries again, with more conviction, like he really means it. "John."

"Okay," Sheppard says, "now you're scaring me."

"Just trying it out," Rodney says. "Because I always call you Sheppard."

"You never call me anything."

"What? Of course I do."

"No you don't. We're always in here alone, and you just talk straight to me."

"Oh," Rodney says. "Huh. Really?"

Sheppard nods — with difficulty, since his head is still only an inch off the table.

"Well, you've always been Sheppard in my head," Rodney says. "But Lorne, he called you John."

"Yeah," Sheppard concedes. "We've known each other since flight school."

"Oh," Rodney says, which effectively ends the conversation from his point of view, because he has only known Sheppard a couple of months, and at any rate, Sheppard just doesn't seem to be a first-name kind of guy. They could know each other for decades — which doesn't seem so unlikely now, since they seem to have fallen into orbit around each other — and still be calling each other Sheppard and McKay. Rodney's okay with that. It's not like Rodney is his real first name anyway.

"You could call me John, though," Sheppard says off-handedly. "It doesn't actually bother me."

"It is your name, after all," Rodney says, but he's ridiculously flattered. As easy as Rodney thinks he himself is to read, Sheppard is difficult, chatty and genial but never about anything important. Rodney thinks Sheppard — _John_ , and that will take some getting used to in his head — probably could write Rodney's biography at this point, with footnotes, but all Rodney's managed to figure out about Sheppard is that he's a pilot, he resents having the ATA gene, he likes dogs and Ferris wheels, and that, no matter how much he downplays his freakish ability to calculate numbers in his head, he's actually quite bright.

Sheppard is staring at him, eyebrows raised and expectant. Rodney gets it a second before it becomes embarrassing. "Oh, of course. Call me Rodney."

"Rodney," Sheppard says, voice lazy and sprawling. "Wow. Next thing you know, we'll be exchanging friendship bracelets."

"I hope not," Rodney says, settling back down to his work. "Because natural fibers on your skin would definitely give you a rash."

* * *

 Sometimes, Rodney is overwhelmed with wonder when he looks around his lab at the SGC. Not because it's so incredible and amazing, but because he can't believe how much he's coming to detest the place. He's doing physics beyond anything he'd ever imagined, but truthfully he doesn't care about the physics anymore. He thinks he ought to, but he's only here because he has to be, and the sense of obligation takes away any pleasure he might otherwise have found in it.

Rodney stabs viciously at his keyboard, hard enough to make Sheppard look up from his report on the mission to P2Y-M3Z. "Problems?"

"Yes," Rodney snaps. "Invent-son went public today."

"Oh." Sheppard scratches absently at the fading blotches on his left arm, shedding flecks of dried hydrocortisone paste on the table. "And that's a problem because ..."

"Because I should _own_ them," Rodney seethes. "Because in my real life, that is what I do. I buy startups before they go public, improve them, and then make a lot of money selling them. I don't," he says angrily, waving at the pieces of Ancient technology scattered all over the lab table, "do _this_."

Sheppard quirks an eyebrow. "So, if you'd owned that company ..."

"I'd have made several hundred million dollars today, yes."

The money is absolutely not the point. Rodney has — or had, before the government froze all his accounts — more money than he could possibly use in his lifetime. For the last several years, in fact, he's been giving away most of what he's earned, setting up educational foundations and academic scholarships all over the world. The point is the thrill, the challenge, the rush when the deal comes together. Intellectually, Rodney knows that the work he's doing here is much more important, that he might well be instrumental in saving the world, that wishing he were buying and selling companies is petty and venal. But the fact is, he doesn't enjoy what he's doing now, hasn't particularly enjoyed theoretical physics, or applied physics for that matter, since his marriage had ended.

The only one at the SGC who seems to get this is Sheppard. (Rodney has given up trying to call him John, because it feels fake and forced and totally, totally wrong; Sheppard is just one of those people whose first name doesn't fit: John is a bland, boring, predictable name, and Sheppard is none of these things.) Sheppard never rolls his eyes when Rodney complains about being forced to save the world, because like Rodney, Sheppard's surrounded by people telling him that he should be grateful he's in such a unique position to do that very thing. It's not that Sheppard doesn't want to save the world, exactly, it's just that all things being equal — which they aren't, and they both get that — he'd rather be flying planes.

Sheppard taps his pencil eraser restlessly against the smudged, sloppy paper he's been scratching at. "Huh," he says, finally. "Well, that sucks."

"Yes," Rodney says irritably, "it does. Almost as much as it does being trapped in a small room with an Air Force Major who has unaccountably developed a very irritating pencil-tapping habit. Will you stop that?"

Sheppard glances down at his pencil. "Sorry."

"What is with the handwritten report anyway? You know how to use a laptop. I've seen you. And by the way, in case I've never mentioned it, watching you hunt and peck at the keyboard gives me hives. I'll bet anything you could find a course in touch typing somewhere in Colorado Springs."

"Did you know I have a secretary?" Sheppard says by way of an answer. "An actual person who is assigned to do things like type my reports for me?"

"Not that I care, but no."

"Yeah," Sheppard says. "Me neither." And then he sighs, as if the burden of having an administrative assistant is the absolute last straw, and they don't talk for the rest of the afternoon.


	2. Chapter 2

_Though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same_

* * *

The day comes when Sheppard's team is scheduled to arrive back from another milk-run mission, this one to P29-X17, the Planet of the Cows, reputedly, which makes the milk-run adjective even more amusing. By lunchtime, Sheppard has still not arrived in Rodney's lab to bitch and complain and tear his hair out — metaphorically speaking, of course, since Sheppard would never do a thing to harm his artfully messy, non-regulation hair. This tardiness is no cause for concern. It just means that whatever strain of poison ivy Sheppard has contracted is particularly virulent, and that he's in the infirmary, bitching and complaining to Dr. Lam instead of Rodney, and making soulful puppy-dog eyes at the nurses as they slather him with hydrocortisone.

Rodney wanders down to the infirmary after lunch, fully prepared to find Sheppard irritable and restless and itching, covered in goop from head to toe. It's an unpleasant shock when he gets there and finds out that Sheppard's actually in surgery, that he was shot three times, in the arm and shoulder and chest, that the cow-people thought he was a demon and had tried to cleanse him from the face of their planet.

"But," Rodney says helplessly to Lorne, who's pacing in the waiting area and looking manfully concerned, and not remotely guilty that he had not bothered to notify Rodney of this catastrophe hours ago, "but you said the planet was safe. He only gets to go to safe planets. There are teams of people whose job it is to make sure he only goes to safe planets."

"Yeah," Lorne says grimly. "Turns out this one wasn't as safe as we thought."

The cow-people had been told Sheppard was coming to examine artifacts in the forbidden ruins, and they had been fine with that. But nobody had warned them that when Sheppard walked by the stone monolith in the center of town, it was going to light up and start shrieking. And it turns out they had tales about that, folk stories passed down from generation to generation to generation, and Sheppard apparently had time to make only one inappropriate phallic joke about the monolith being happy to see him before the cow-people had pulled out their weapons and opened fire.

Sheppard is only not dead because his tac vest deflected the most deadly bullets, and because the cow-people had single shot handguns, while the Marines had P-90s. Now there are three dead cow-people, a dozen other wounded cow-people, a Marine with a bullet graze in the thigh, and Sheppard in surgery to remove a bullet that nicked a lung.

The surgeon, someone whom Rodney has never met and whose name he instantly forgets, comes out after Rodney's been there for three hours and tells them that Sheppard will be fine, he's stable, he's breathing on his own, there shouldn't be any permanent physical effects, but he’ll be stuck in the infirmary for the foreseeable future.

"Thank god," Lorne breathes, and slides down into a chair, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. He sits up after a minute, face still a little grey, eyes exhausted. He'd been here for hours before Rodney wandered in, and it shows. "I have to make a report to General Hammond and President Landry. Jesus, if John had died ..."

Rodney knows that Lorne doesn't mean to sound as callous as he does. Sheppard's a friend of his, has been for nearly 20 years, and Rodney has watched Lorne pace for the past three hours, pale and agitated and filled with concern that is way more than strictly professional. But Sheppard's going to be all right, and Lorne's mind is already moving on to the tactical repercussions, because Lorne's career military and that's how he thinks.

Rodney is not military and that's not how he thinks. Rodney thinks about Sheppard getting shot, about thin layers of Kevlar making the difference between life and death, about the fact that when he bought and sold companies, nobody ever got shot. About how, since Sam, he hasn't gotten close enough to anyone to care this much whether they lived or died, so much that he'd sit around in an infirmary waiting room, shaking, _praying_.

"They're never going to let him off-world again," Lorne says tiredly. "Shit. He's going to go crazy."

Good god, Rodney thinks, as that sinks in. He really is.

* * *

Rodney finally gets in to see Sheppard the next day. Sheppard's lying in bed, awkwardly propped up on a couple of pillows, tubes running into and out of places Rodney doesn't want to know about, an IV dripping a cocktail of medications into his arm, and about five hundred monitors beeping quietly behind him.

"Hey," Rodney says.

Sheppard looks up from the book of sudoku puzzles he's been staring at. He's pale and tired and in desperate need of a shave. He's also clearly drugged up, because Rodney's seen him do sudoku before, and it's kind of a scary thing the way Sheppard just fills in box after box without even thinking. Now Sheppard's staring at the book like it's written in a foreign language, and Rodney can actually see eraser smudges on the page.

"Hey," Sheppard says back, and yes, he’s definitely drugged; his eyes are heavy lidded and slightly glazed.

Rodney has never been good around sick people, but he's been in the infirmary with Sheppard dozens of times before, and they have a routine for it. Most of which, admittedly, is better suited to a bad rash than gunshot wounds, but Rodney is adaptable. So instead of making jokes about vicious plants, Rodney says, "Cow people, John? You were shot by cow people."

Sheppard smiles wanly, and answers, "You called me John."

"Oh," Rodney says, and waves vaguely at the hospital bed and all the equipment. "Well, yes. You were shot. It seemed appropriate."

"Huh," Sheppard says, "yeah, okay." He nods, then he blinks dizzily. "Whoa, head rush."

"That'd be the painkillers," Rodney says. He leans forward and takes the pencil out of Sheppard’s unresisting fingers, and places it and the sudoku book on the table next to the bed. "And you are way too dopey to be doing puzzles."

"I'm not dopey," Sheppard slurs. "I was shot. Three times."

Five, Rodney wants to say, because Lorne had told him that they'd dug out two more bullets from the tac vest, and Sheppard's got two matching bruises underneath the scrubs, but it seems pointless because three's plenty, three's more than enough. "Do you get the Purple Heart now?"

"No," Sheppard says sleepily.

Rodney is deeply offended on his behalf. "Why not? You were shot! Okay, maybe you weren't technically defending the United States, and maybe the cow-people don't count as opposing forces, but-"

"Rodney," Sheppard says, and whoa, hey, it's as weird to hear Sheppard call him by his first name as it was to call Sheppard John, "I've already got the Purple Heart. You can't get it more than once."

"Oh." Rodney is somewhat mollified, and also deeply curious. "When did you get it?"

"Afghanistan," Sheppard says. He's drowsy and mellow. Rodney wonders if he'd be talking about this so calmly if he weren't drugged. Rodney wonders if he’d be talking about it all, if he’ll be upset later to realize he let personal information slip. "My helicopter got shot down. Took some shrapnel in the leg." He yawns. "Might get an oak leaf. Dunno."

Rodney thinks it doesn't matter to Sheppard whether he gets another decoration, that to him it’s irrelevant. But of course, that makes sense, because Sheppard doesn't do what he does for the medals and honors; he does it just because that's what he does. Rodney is briefly envious that Sheppard has something that he believes in so deeply that he will die for it, but then he thinks that Sheppard almost died, and he feels abruptly nauseated.

He reaches for Sheppard’s hand and squeezes it, hard.

Sheppard looks up, frowning. It takes his eyes a few seconds to focus. “Hey, that hurts.”

“It does not,” Rodney says. “You are on so much morphine right now I’m surprised you can feel it at all.”

Sheppard’s brow wrinkles as he looks at their joined hands, befuddled. “I think I can feel my hand,” he says. “Wait. Which one is mine?” He twists the hand in Rodney’s grip experimentally and stares stupidly for a moment. “The one that moved. That’s mine, right? The other one is yours.”

Rodney can be patient, sometimes, if the situation calls for it. “Yes, John. The other one is mine.”

“Okay,” Sheppard says. His eyes drift closed. Rodney thinks he may have fallen asleep, but a moment later, Sheppard says, “You’re holding my hand, Rodney. Why are you holding my hand?”

Rodney doesn’t have an immediate answer for this, because he is not quite sure himself. Still, he doesn’t feel particularly inclined to let go. “Because,” he says, after a long pause.

Sheppard is drugged enough that this non-answer is apparently sufficient. “Okay. Just don’t let anyone see.”

“Even your homophobic military establishment would not blame you if they saw. You were shot, John. Friends are allowed to hold hands after one of them gets shot.”

Sheppard’s only answer is an indistinct mumble, and a moment later his breathing goes deep and even as he sinks back into sleep.

Rodney sits and watches for a long time, still gripping Sheppard’s hand in his own. He thinks of Sam and how she died doing something she believed in, and that he never got the chance to hold her hand as she lay in a hospital bed. He wonders if she would even have wanted him to. He thinks she probably wouldn’t have.

Sheppard doesn’t seem to mind it, though. His hand stays quiet and comfortable in Rodney’s palm. Rodney squeezes again, not quite so hard. “Don’t get shot again, you moron,” he says. “I just got used to having you around.”

* * *

Now it's not Sheppard camping out in Rodney's lab, it's Rodney camped out by Sheppard's bed in the infirmary, although as the days go by the infirmary is coming more and more to resemble Rodney's lab, with Ancient gadgets and tools and computers scattered everywhere, wires and cables hazardously roped across the floor. A few of the nurses have dared to complain, but Rodney is not easily cowed. Plus, there are some advantages to being the personal advisor to the President, and Rodney does not hesitate to use them.

"I don't get it," Rodney says to Sheppard one day.

Sheppard is sitting up in bed, scowling at a mission report. "Can you believe this?" he says irritably, completely ignoring Rodney. "Naked women and a _feast_ ." He turns the page, and his scowl deepens. "And a fertility ritual. _Fertility ritual._ You know what that is, don't you? That's code for an orgy." Now that SG10 is no longer babysitting Sheppard, they’ve been given interesting missions again. "Paying them off for putting up with me," Sheppard mutters darkly. "Jesus. It's not like I wanted to go on boring missions."

"Look at the bright side," Rodney suggests. "No more poison ivy."

The glare he gets in returned is laser-sharp and filled with more venom than a nest of snakes. Sheppard is not a good patient. He is not a _patient_ patient, and he wants out. The doctors won't release him, though — rumor has it that Landry has ordered them to keep him there — and even when he gets out, he's grounded for the next millennium and a half, or until the Ori are completely eliminated, whichever comes last. It's apparently too much for Sheppard to take. Each day he spends in the infirmary sees him lose more and more of his good cheer and affability. He's nearly down to McKay levels now, whiny and irritable, acerbic and angry. Most of the nursing staff has been scared off, except for Bruno — seriously, _Bruno_ — who is Russian, somewhat hard of hearing, and apparently completely devoid of a soul.

"I'm going to blow it up," Sheppard says, flopping back on his pillow in frustration and tossing the mission report to the floor where it immediately gets lost among the forest of wires and cables. "I swear to god, I'm going to blow this whole fucking place up."

Rodney rolls his eyes, and takes a few desultory stabs at his keyboard. He has discovered that so long as he hands in regular reports on his progress, no one cares how much progress he is actually making. Possibly they just can't understand his reports, but that is not his problem. "You are not going to blow this place up."

"I am so."

"You are not," Rodney says patiently. "Blowing up Stargate Command is a bad idea. We have been through this. Would you like me to remind you why?"

"No," Sheppard says sullenly. He picks irritably at the blanket on the bed. "If you were really my friend, you'd figure out how to defeat the Ori."

"Working on it," Rodney says, and taps a few more keys on his laptop to prove the point.

"Work faster," Sheppard grumbles, then cranes his head around. "And where the hell is my sudoku book?"

"I can't believe you're still doing these things," Rodney says, fishing the book out from where it's fallen under the bed. "They're going to rot your brain." Sheppard has graduated to "The World's Most Fiendishly Difficult Sudoku Puzzles," which are supposed to take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour for expert solvers; Sheppard rips through them in about two minutes. Rodney thinks Sheppard's mind must be a scary, scary place.

Sheppard opens the book to the middle, clicks open a pen and starts to fill in boxes in his small, cramped handwriting. He dispensed with the pencils as soon as they took him off the pain meds.

Rodney watches him for a minute. If Sheppard is aware of the scrutiny, he is determinedly ignoring it. This is just him being mulish and petty.

"You're not working," Sheppard says without looking up. He's already in the middle of the third line of the puzzle — the third line already, what the hell is up with that? That's just not natural. Sheppard doesn't even do the puzzles in logical order; he fills them out horizontally like he's working from a cheat sheet. Rodney actually thought Sheppard was just screwing around, trying to freak Rodney out, but Rodney had checked the answers one day while Sheppard had been dozing and they'd all been right.

"I'm thinking," Rodney protests, and if he's thinking about Sheppard's freakish sudoku abilities instead of how to defeat the Ori, well, that's just because he can't concentrate in the infirmary. "You need to get out of here."

Sheppard snorts and mutters, "Tell me something I don't know."

* * *

 

When Sheppard finally loses it, nearly eight weeks after being shot, he does it in spectacular fashion. Rodney is not in the infirmary at the time, having recently decided that his ten-hour-a-day vigils at Sheppard's bedside are becoming creepy and stalkerish. He will later speculate that it was his absence that triggered the meltdown, but at the time it happens, he's busy working in his mostly empty lab, running an experiment on a piece of equipment that is too big to lug down to the infirmary and so has been mostly ignored for the past two months.

Sheppard has become increasingly ill-tempered. Even Bruno is starting to look apprehensive when approaching his bedside. It turns out Sheppard picked up enough street Russian on one of his duty tours to be incredibly offensive. Rodney doesn't speak Russian, but he has a good ear and can use BabelFish as well as the next geek, and even he finds himself wincing, if belatedly, at some of Sheppard's more vituperative rants.

"I knew the charm was just a sham," Rodney had said just the other day, after one of Sheppard's fits left Bruno red-faced and quite possibly teary-eyed. "You're just as much of an asshole as I am."

"Oh no," Sheppard had responded darkly, stabbing his pen furiously through the pages of his Big Book of Cryptograms. "I am much more of an asshole than you will ever be."

Rodney doubts this, because Sheppard's never seen Rodney when he's had occasion to be a real asshole, but on the other hand, Sheppard just made a 115 kilo, 2 meter male nurse cry.

Interestingly, as Sheppard becomes more and more choleric, Rodney finds him more and more attractive, which is disturbing on many levels. When he'd found himself staring fondly at the vein throbbing in Sheppard's forehead, Rodney knew he was in trouble. It was about that time he'd decided to cut the daily visits down to something a little more reasonable. Like, say, nine and a half hours instead of ten. Moderation is key.

So Rodney's in his lab, playing Tetris while his experiment runs — without Sheppard there, it turns out that the down time during experiments is really dull; this is a fact of the life of an experimental physicist that Rodney had forgotten about — when the phone extension in the room buzzes obnoxiously.

Rodney stares at it for a moment, perplexed. No one has ever called him on that phone. In fact, up until that minute, he'd have sworn there was no phone in the room.

The phone rings again, and Rodney comes out of his fugue long enough to pick it up and demand, "What?"

"Thank god," a voice says, scratchy and heartfelt. "You need to come to the infirmary, Dr. McKay. Major Lorne says — " there is a pause, and an ominous crash followed by more ominous shouting, "Major Lorne says you need to come here right away."

Something has happened with Sheppard, obviously; there is no one else in the infirmary, or for that matter, in the entire base, that Rodney cares about enough to go anywhere right away. As he rushes down the hall, Rodney can't help thinking that Sheppard is dead or dying as a complication from the gunshot wounds or possibly from directed ill-will via Bruno. Which would serve Sheppard right for being such a complete and utter jerk to Bruno, but on the other hand, Rodney really doesn't want Sheppard to be dead or dying. If Sheppard is all right, Rodney is buying a punching bag for Bruno, just in case. Or maybe one of those little scrunchy things you can squeeze in your hand; they are more portable than punching bags, though admittedly Bruno is big enough that he might consider a punching bag portable.

Sheppard is not dead or dying. When Rodney arrives in the infirmary, Sheppard is up and out of bed, eyes wild, hair wilder, having a fit.

"No," Sheppard is saying, and on anyone else that tone of voice would be borderline hysterical. On Sheppard it's somehow homicidal. "I've _had_ it. I quit, do you get it?" There are still monitors attached to him, monitoring his very healthy heartbeat — just now running a little fast — his disgustingly healthy blood pressure — now a little higher than normal — his temperature, his oxygen saturation, plus some other presumably very important vital statistics, all of which indicate that he is about as healthy as it is possible for a human to be.

Sheppard is ripping the feeds off himself one at a time, and the monitors are shrieking indignantly behind him. Somewhere in the corner, Bruno is sitting down on a chair, having an ugly looking bruise on his face tended to by an irritated-looking Dr. Lam. Bruno is looking at Sheppard resentfully; Lam keeps glancing at Sheppard as if he is a bomb that is in the process of exploding. Rodney thinks the comparison is fairly accurate.

"I don't care," Sheppard says, still in that wild, dangerously homicidal voice, "I don't fucking care who ordered it, I am not staying here one more fucking minute."

Lorne is standing a few feet away. The left side of his face is red and swollen. It's just possible that he's been punched or otherwise physically assaulted. "John," he says carefully, "you're overreacting."

"I am not fucking overreacting," Sheppard says, and Rodney can tell he's upset because he's just used some variation of "fuck" three times in under a minute, and Sheppard is never that foul-mouthed when there are women in the room. "I've been here for two months, Evan. Two _months_."

"Well, you were shot," Lorne says reasonably.

This only seems to make Sheppard angrier. "I know I was shot!" The heart monitor is beeping shrilly behind him, and Sheppard whirls around and flings a bedpan at it. It gasps out one long pathetic whiny wail, and falls silent. "I know I was shot," Sheppard repeats, turning back around and glaring at Lorne, "and okay, I get that I've got the gene and I'm important, all right? But I'm not going to live the rest of my fucking life in this infirmary. McKay."

Rodney is still feeling relief that John is not dead or dying, and he is also finding the sight of Sheapprd upright and barefoot strangely distracting, so it takes him a second to realize he's being spoken to, not spoken about. "Huh?"  
  
"Clothes. You have to know where they're hiding the clothes. Find me some."

"Doc," Lorne says warningly, and Rodney thinks, oh right, this is probably why he wanted me to come, to keep Sheppard from going nuts or AWOL or both.

"I don't know where they keep the clothes," Rodney says. He's not at all certain he wants to be the one to pacify Sheppard, even if it would be possible (which he doubts). He thinks Sheppard has a point. Also, wild, homicidal Sheppard is strangely hot. "Why would I know that? I know where they keep the food. Not the clothes."

"Rodney," Sheppard says, his wild, desperate eyes wide and unblinking. "Rodney, you have to get me out of here. If I have to do another crossword puzzle I will lose what little brain function I have left."

Rodney considers this. "I don't think you will," he says finally. "But you may lose your tenuous grip on your sanity. Why don't you just wear the scrubs out? They're kind of like sweats. Only, you know, orange and ugly."

"Doc," Lorne says, groaning, but Sheppard is already staring down at his clothes, considering them.

"You're right," Sheppard says. "You're brilliant. I don't need clothes."

Rodney is just barely strong enough to keep his face straight at the image _that_ brings to mind, and follows Sheppard out of the infirmary, mouthing to Lorne, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch him,” as they go. It is some measure of the respect the SGC has for Sheppard — or the fear they have of his possibly homicidal tendencies — that they are not stopped as they go.


	3. Chapter 3

_Oh, I kept the first for another day!_

* * *

Sheppard, once out of Cheyenne Mountain, is manic and restless, driving his candy-apple red Corvette insanely fast, taking curves at speeds Rodney considers recklessly suicidal, not to mention highly illegal. Sheppard doesn't seem to care, blithely ignoring Rodney's screeches of protest as he steps harder on the gas pedal.

"I don't think I can go back there," Sheppard says as he pulls into a parking lot next to a nondescript apartment building. His eyes are still a little wild. "Do you think they'd catch me if I run?"

"Of course they would," Rodney says. "They probably planted a subcutaneous transponder during surgery."

"Jesus," Sheppard says. He looks sort of horrified. "Do you really think so? Can they do that?"

"Absolutely," Rodney says. "Maybe not legally, but I don't know if Landry cares about that if it means he can keep track of you."

"Christ," Sheppard groans. "You're right. I'm never getting away from them."

"Well," Rodney says brightly, "at least you're out of the infirmary. That's something."

"I suppose." He sounds dejected.

When they get out of the car. Rodney points to the two dark sedans parked sedately on either side of the parking lot. "They're trailing you. Maybe no subcutaneous transmitter after all."

"Swell." Sheppard does not sound wildly enthusiastic, but his mood improves when they get into his apartment which is, good god, so late 30's bachelor pad that it makes Rodney cringe. Bare walls make it look cold, and there are crates instead of chairs. Crates. Seriously. Rodney revises his estimate down from bachelor pad to impoverished college student hovel.

"Your fridge has nothing in it but beer," he shouts over his shoulder. Sheppard has disappeared into the bedroom to get rid of the scrubs.

"What's your point?" comes the answering shout. "Beer is good."

"Beer is only one of the four major food groups," Rodney shoots back. He pulls out two, then hunts through the cabinets for something resembling food. Mostly what he finds are stale chips and packs of ramen noodles. "For god’s sake, Sheppard, don't you eat?"

Sheppard walks into the kitchen, pulling a black sweatshirt over his head. "I mostly eat at the base. I've got chips, don't I?"

"They're two months old." This doesn't stop Rodney from eating them. It's been a long day. "What's with the furniture?"

Sheppard glances around at the mostly empty apartment. "What furniture?"

"My point exactly. What are you, 39? 40? You can't afford a table?"

"Six months ago I was in Iraq," Sheppard says. "And a year before that, I was in Afghanistan. Before that, I was in Somalia." He flicks a cap off one of the beers, and takes a swig. Rodney resolutely does not watch the way his throat works as he swallows. "I haven't had an apartment of my own for 15 years. Give me a break."

"I'll give you the number of my interior designer," Rodney mutters.

"You have an interior designer?"

Sheppard obviously finds this deeply entertaining. Rodney feels unaccountably defensive. "Why shouldn't I? I have no aesthetic sensibility. Doesn't mean I want to live in an ugly house."

"Yeah," Sheppard says, "but ... an interior designer."

Rodney rolls his eyes. "Yes, yes, please feel free to make the requisite homosexual jokes and get it out of your system."

"Nah," Sheppard says, grinning as he picks at the stale chips. "Too easy."

* * *

Sheppard had originally wanted to go for a nice meal in a nice restaurant, but the dark sedans trailing them — now parked outside of his apartment building — sour him on the idea. "I don't," he says grumpily, "want them to get a nice meal out of it too."

"They won't go in," Rodney says reasonably.

"They'll order from the kitchen and eat it in their cars," Sheppard says darkly. So they decide instead on take-out, but Rodney flatly refuses to eat in Sheppard's unfurnished kitchen.

"I've got a couple chairs around here somewhere," Sheppard suggests helpfully, after he admits that on the rare occasion he eats at home, he does so standing at the counter. "I'm sure we could rig up some kind of table. You're a genius."

"Or we could go eat in my apartment, which has an actual dining room," Rodney says acidly. "Since I am an adult and have actually furnished my residence."

"You mean your interior designer furnished it," Sheppard says, smirking, to which the only proper retort is to throw the empty chip bag at his head. Sheppard bats it away without blinking, his perfect reflexes one more piece of anecdotal evidence that he's healed quite nicely, thanks.

There's really no reason to get take-out; Rodney's a more than adequate cook and his kitchen is furnished as well as any restaurant's, but cooking for Sheppard would make this seem like some kind of a date, and he's pretty sure it isn't. Plus, Sheppard wants sushi, and while Rodney can prepare it, it's time consuming and Sheppard doesn't want to wait. "I haven't had real food in eight weeks," he says, although to Rodney that's hardly an argument for why he can't last one more hour. But there is no point. Sheppard wants take-out, and Rodney doesn't really have it in him to argue the point.

They order from Jun — "best sushi in Colorado Springs," Rodney insists — and swing by to pick it up on the way to Rodney's place.

"Jesus," Sheppard says as he loads the third bag into the trunk, "did you invite friends to join us without telling me?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I don’t have any other friends," which is sad but true.

Sheppard laughs and screeches back into the street. The black sedans follow more sedately behind them. "You've got plenty of sycophants though. For all I know, you invited them."

Rodney snorts. "Yes, I invited Drs. Zepinka and Kavanagh over from Area 51. They're flying in any minute, because I am that masochistic."

"You might be," Sheppard muses, "you spent the last two months with me in the infirmary."

"That wasn't masochism. That was self-sacrifice. Noble self-sacrifice."

Sheppard laughs again, free and easy. "Well, I appreciate it, buddy."

Rodney feels an unaccustomed warm glow, but is saved from having to answer by Sheppard's wild swerve into the left lane, and a sudden insane acceleration up to 90 miles per hour. With the SGC decal on his bumper, Sheppard won't be getting pulled over, but, "Being exempt from tickets doesn't mean it's safe to drive like a maniac!" Rodney yells, bracing himself against the dashboard. "It would be very poor planning to kill us before we've had a chance to eat that sushi!" And it would piss off the guys in the black sedans, too, who are blurry white lights in the rearview mirror, doing a poor job at keeping up.

"I'm not going to get us killed, McKay," Sheppard says with a grin. "I'm just hungry."

Sheppard is as good as his word. They survive the trip to Rodney's apartment unscathed, although Rodney stomps out of the car muttering dark things about his blood pressure, which he is certain spiked to dangerous levels at multiple times during the trip. "I'm blaming you if they put me on medication," he grumbles, fishing his keys out of his pocket.

Sheppard's grinning a goofy, dorky grin, and he looks more relaxed than Rodney's seen him since the cow-people shot him, except for the first few days when he was totally doped up, which don't count. Sheppard's grin slowly fades when they enter Rodney's apartment, and Rodney's abruptly self-conscious about the amount of money he spent on it.

"Wow," Sheppard says, dropping the take-out bags on the closest surface, and spinning around. "Holy shit. This is your place?"

"Oh, um, yes. One of them," Rodney says awkwardly.

"One of them. Right." Sheppard looks a little dazed, suddenly a little less sure of himself, checking out the expensive rugs on the floor, the original oil paintings on the wall. Rodney's not excessively frugal with his money, but he's no spendthrift either; his other dotcom millionaire acquaintances have far more extravagance in their homes. Yet suddenly the rugs and the paintings — "investments, sweetheart," the designer had said — seem immoderate and embarrassing, Sheppard's empty apartment far more honest.

"Jesus," Sheppard says, ducking his head into the kitchen, "I knew you had a lot of money, but you don't act like it. This is the first time it's really hit me how rich you actually are."

"Not so much anymore," Rodney says, picking up the bags and carrying them into the kitchen, and hoping this part of the conversation ends soon. "They froze my assets, remember?"

"Yeah, but you could sell a couple of these paintings and — Christ, is this an original Picasso?"

Rodney considers lying only momentarily, but dismisses the idea. Sheppard would know. He'd smell it, probably. "Yes."

"Forget it. You could sell _one_ of these paintings and — is this one of Munch's _Scream_ paintings?"

"Yes." Rodney wanders back out into the hall, where Sheppard's staring at the framed painting. "I bought it after Sam and I divorced. Seemed appropriate at the time."

"Seems appropriate now," Sheppard says, then shrugs and heads back to the kitchen. "Let's eat."

They eat in the dining room. Rodney admits it's only the second time since the divorce that he's had a meal there; the first time he'd tried, the room had seemed vast and empty, cold and uninviting, so he hasn't used it since.

"Gee," Sheppard says after a minute, "I don't know whether to be flattered or kind of creeped out by that."

"Given the choice," Rodney says, "I would recommend you go for flattered."

Sheppard grins. "All right, I can do that."

The dining room is no less cavernous than ever, but not as chilly with two people in it, eating off the good china — "Do I even want to know how much this plate cost?" Sheppard asks, to which Rodney answers, "I doubt it" — when Sheppard asks conversationally, "So what's it like, being out?"

Rodney nearly chokes on a shrimp, and stares balefully at Sheppard once the coughing fit has subsided.

"What? I'm just curious."

"Curious. About being out."

"Yes. Come on, McKay, I want to know. You seem very comfortable with it all. I mean with the," and here he points vaguely at the china and the tapestries on the walls, "fancy décor, and asking me on a date, and —"

"This is not a date!" Rodney interrupts indignantly.

John raises an eyebrow at him. "You invited me over to your place. We're eating on plates that probably cost more than my annual salary-"

"They're not that expensive," Rodney interrupts with a grumble.

Sheppard ignores him. "And you keep refilling my wine glass. This isn't your idea of a date?"

"It would be," Rodney says acidly, "if you were gay. Which you aren't. And I don't imagine a few glasses of merlot would be sufficient to change your sexual orientation, so no, it's not a date. Well," he adds, thinking, "maybe a man-date. Totally platonic."

"Good," Sheppard says, rolling his eyes. "I'm glad we've got that cleared up." He reaches forward to spear another vegetable roll with his chopstick, "So, what are your theories?"

Rodney stares at him. "My theories about what? Astrophysics? The stock market? Why the Asgard don't wear any clothes?"

"Wait, what?" Sheppard says. "The who don't wear any clothes?"

"The Asgard," Rodney says. "Haven't you met any of them yet? Little gray guys."

"Like from _Alien Autopsy_?"

"Please tell me you didn't watch that."

"Hey, come on," Sheppard says defensively, "I was in Afghanistan. Entertainment options were limited. They don't wear clothes?"

"No," Rodney says. "Personally, I find it a little disturbing. Apparently they used to, before they devolved. Thor says-"

"Thor? As in Thor, the God of Thunder?"

"Again, disturbingly, yes."

Sheppard is gaping at him. "See, there's all kinds of crap like this nobody's ever told me. Does Evan know about these naked aliens? Because that's the kind of stuff I should know."

"I think Major Lorne is well-acquainted with the Asgard," Rodney says. "Although I don't believe he's very fond of them." He grabs a piece of sushi. He's eating way too much, but Sheppard's still going like he hasn't eaten anything at all in the past two months, and Rodney's always been a social eater. "Is this what you wanted to know? My theories about the Asgard?"

"Oh," Sheppard says, but he still seems a little dazed. "No. I wanted to know your theories about why they're keeping me hostage in the SGC."

"Hostage is overstating the case a bit," Rodney says dryly. "They did let you out."

"Well, yeah," Sheppard says, "but only under guard." He's obviously frustrated. "And I'm pretty sure they wouldn’t have let me out at all if I wasn't going with you. Plus I've got the Secret Service trailing me. I mean, come on, I'm just one guy."

"You've got the gene-"

"Fuck the gene! Jesus. It's not like I can do anything with it. The chair's in Area 51, we don't have a power source, so what does it matter if I have the damn gene or not? We haven't found a single piece of Ancient technology that does anything worthwhile except the one you're working on, and you don't even need the gene to operate that. Come on, McKay, I know you've been thinking about this."

Rodney nods. He has been thinking about it, not in a very concerted way, but enough to have come up with a few ideas. "The way I figure it, there are three possibilities." Rodney holds up a finger. "One, they've got some other piece of Ancient tech that they're keeping under wraps, and they want you around to operate it. Maybe some kind of doomsday device."

"What, like a bomb? You think they want me to operate a bomb? Because I like my body all in one piece."

"Which could be why they haven't told you about it." He holds up a second finger. "Two, they've got a second power source for the chair, but I think that's unlikely. It would need to be a ZPM or the equivalent, and if they had one of those, they wouldn't need to be draining the whole power grid to operate Merlin's weapon to keep us phased. However, I wouldn't want to bet money on Landry's being completely rational about this."

"All right," Sheppard says. "So what's the third possibility?"

"They want to breed you," Rodney says.

"Breed me," Sheppard says, voice rising high. "Like a stallion?"

"Exactly. The gene's inherited. They might be planning to create a whole army of baby gene carriers. Did they take any sperm from you while you were in the infirmary?"

"Hell no!" Sheppard says indignantly. Then his forehead crinkles dubiously. "At least, I don't think so. I had a catheter in for like two weeks. Could they have, I don't know, snuck 'em out when I was doped up?"

Rodney shrugs. "I don't know. Dr. Lam doesn't strike me as particularly trustworthy. Did you know she's Landry's daughter?"

"No," Sheppard says. His eyes are wide, and he's starting to look a little freaked out. "Fuck, you think they took my sperm?"

"I didn't say that. I just said they might have."

"To make little mutant babies!"

"Mutant?" Sheppard obviously has a few issues with being a gene carrier. "You're not a mutant, and your kids won't be either."

"I don't want any kids!" Sheppard says wildly. Definitely freaking out. "If I wanted kids, I would have had them with my wife!"

Now it's Rodney's turn to gape. "Wife? You're married?"

"God no," Sheppard says. "Past tense. Very past tense."

Rodney stares at him accusingly. "So all those times you were asking me about my divorce, you didn't think to mention you were divorced too?"

Sheppard at least has the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Didn’t really seem relevant,” he says. “I could tell you about it, if you want.” He looks completely unenthusiastic about the offer, which is frankly fine with Rodney, because other than knowing Sheppard too has a failed marriage to his name, he is in truth completely uninterested in knowing any other details.

“No,” Rodney says. “I wouldn’t want you to accidentally get emotional and hurt yourself. Pass the sushi.”

* * *

Sheppard proves to be an easy drunk, despite his claims to the contrary, and three shots of Glenlivet later, he's drowsing on the couch, one arm flung over his eyes, the other trailing loosely on the floor. They had been discussing ... something of great political import, Rodney thinks, like movies, or politics, or else possibly movies about politics. Rodney is also an easy drunk, and he is still on his feet only by virtue of sheer will and stubbornness.

It's not really all that late, barely past 11, but Rodney doesn't see the point in waking Sheppard up just to send him home to sleep. So he staggers to the linen closet and pulls out a cashmere blanket — wondering, a little horrified, how much he paid for it — and stumbles back into the library. Sheppard barely twitches when Rodney tosses the blanket over him, so Rodney dims the lights and makes his way upstairs, where he crashes on his bed, too tired to take his shoes off, or possibly just too drunk to care.

When he wakes the next morning, head pounding, Sheppard is nowhere to be found. The cashmere blanket is folded neatly on the couch, and there is a note in the kitchen in Sheppard's small, cramped writing that states: "I stole one of your coffee makers and some coffee, which looked way more expensive than anything I could afford on my own. I don't feel even a little bit guilty. Don't call me. I have the hangover from hell." It's signed with a stark "J", which makes Rodney smile. He crumples the note up and tosses it into the garbage can, because he is not the sort to hold on to people's handwriting samples. That's just creepy and wrong.

After a shower, he feels minutely better, and picks up the phone before remembering Sheppard told him not to call, and he doesn't have his number anyway. Except it only takes a minute while he's checking his e-mail (all junk, albeit junk from people with PhDs) to surf to a directory site and pick up Sheppard's phone number. It's not even unlisted, which is practically an invitation.

So then Rodney calls, and Sheppard picks up the phone with a growl and says, "I told you not to call me," and hangs up.

Rodney laughs. He's an easy drunk, but a couple of cups of coffee gets him through his hangovers. Sheppard doesn't sound so lucky.  After a minute, he hits redial on the phone. "Seriously, McKay," Sheppard says irritably. "I mean it. I'm going to go soak my head in the tub and if I'm talking on the phone while I'm doing that, I'll get electrocuted." Then he hangs up again.

Rodney waits a decent interval before dialing again.

"Christ, _what_?" Sheppard snaps. "Do you really want your damn coffee maker back that badly? You've got three others."

"Good morning to you too. Keep the coffee maker," Rodney says sweetly, and hangs up.

He waits until lunchtime before heading over to Sheppard's apartment. This is for several reasons. First and foremost, he has spent two months watching Sheppard grow progressively more cranky and irritable in the infirmary, and expects that Sheppard with a hangover will be more of the same. Thus, a little waiting time is in order. Second, he has decided that it is a crime against humanity for Sheppard's apartment to be so ruthlessly unfurnished. He spends most of the morning going through his house throwing things into boxes and wrapping paintings in bubblewrap. Lastly. Well. Lastly, he's waiting because he's decided he wants to see Sheppard just a little too much, which is a sure sign that he is becoming infatuated. Since Sheppard is straight, this is futile and ridiculous and also possibly an indication of developing dementia.

There is also a fourth reason, an almost insignificant one, which is that something about the previous evening is nagging at him like a ragged hangnail, and he doesn't trust himself to drive while so preoccupied. That way lies speeding tickets, accidents, or both.

By noon, he has come no closer to figuring out whatever it is that is bothering him. He has, however, wrapped up three paintings that he thinks Sheppard will like, as well as a few small statues — all originals by local artists, tasteful but not disgustingly expensive — and baked a small lasagna.

It is only after he is halfway to Sheppard's place that he starts worrying that Sheppard will misconstrue Rodney showing up at his door with food, but then he decides that it is perfectly justified. Rodney has seen Sheppard's apartment, and real food does not seem to live there. Besides, no one turns down a freshly cooked lasagna. With vegetables, no less.

"Oh, my god," Sheppard says when he opens the door, gaping at the casserole dish. "You cooked for me?"

"I cooked for us," Rodney says. "Go turn on your oven." Then he stops and stares dubiously at Sheppard, who is still standing stupidly in the doorway with a pack of ramen noodles in his hand. "You do know how to use an oven, don't you? Turn the big dial to 300. It won't take long. The pan is still warm."

Sheppard shakes his head slowly, like he's trying to clear it of cobwebs. "I ... this is like _Fantasy Island_ or something. Except you're not a tall blonde in a negligee."

"No," Rodney says brightly, "but I brought garlic bread. And salad."

Sheppard looks interested and hungry. "Okay, I forgive you for not being blonde and in a negligee. But I don't have any salad dressing."

Rodney fishes a bottle out of his pocket. "I came prepared for contingencies. Go get out the plates or do something else useful. I have stuff to bring in from the car."

"What stuff?" Sheppard calls out from over his shoulder as he pads into the kitchen.

"Just stuff," Rodney calls back. "Don't worry. I won't blow up your apartment." The sun is warm on his face as he hurries back to the car, and Rodney thinks he's forgotten how nice it is to be someplace that is not under a mountain.

They look through the boxes while the lasagna is reheating. "Nothing in here cost more than a hundred dollars," Rodney says. "I swear."

Sheppard is looking doubtfully at one of the small statues. "Isn't this a Rodin?"

"Reproduction," Rodney says dismissively. He’s almost certain he is not lying. "Not that expensive, I promise. Here." He takes the statue and sticks it on a bookshelf. "See? It'll look great next to the books."

Sheppard does not look convinced. "I only have paperbacks."

"Not anymore." Rodney pulls out a few books from the third box. "No first editions, I promise. But classics you might like to read."

Sheppard grins at him, and Rodney is struck again by that nagging feeling like he's forgotten something very important. "Did we ... " he says slowly. "Did we do anything last night? Anything unusual? Or discuss anything unusual?"

Sheppard blinks slowly. "Except for the part where you think they're harvesting my sperm, no. Why?"

"I don't know," Rodney says. "It's just like I feel like I forgot something important, and I can't remember what. It's driving me crazy."

"You did say you thought Sean Connery was completely miscast in _The Last Crusade_ ," Sheppard says. "Which is kind of crazy."

"Come on," Rodney snorts. "He's like twelve years older than Harrison Ford. Which makes Henry Jones promiscuous at a much younger age than I care to think about."

"Okay," Sheppard says. "Obviously we need to go over the distinction between fact and fiction." Then he sniffs. "Shit! The pasta!"

They rescue the lasagna from the oven just in time, and have a picnic on Sheppard's floor. Sheppard pulls out a few pillows to use as cushions, and an old football blanket. "Obviously," he says as he carefully serves the food, "I need to get a real table. If, you know, I'm actually going to be allowed to spend time here now."

"Ah," Rodney says. "That reminds me." He gets up slowly, his knees protesting every inch of the way, and pulls out a small machine from one of the boxes. "You know those black sedans are parked outside."

"Yeah," Sheppard says glumly. "I'm trying not to think about it. What the hell are you doing?"

"Scanning for bugs," Rodney answers. "I wouldn't put it past them to wire your apartment."

"Why? What do you think they're afraid of, that I'm going to defect or something?"

"I have no idea," Rodney says, "which is saying something. But that doesn't preclude them from bugging you. Although it looks like they haven't." He puts the scanner down on the counter, next to the pilfered coffee machine. "Hey, how'd you know it was me on the phone this morning?"

"Evan had already called, and you're the only other person who would call me," Sheppard says. "Plus, caller ID."

Rodney lowers himself slowly down to the blanket. "Okay, after lunch, first priority is to go get you a kitchen set. Imagine yourself eating at a real table." He picks up his plate and takes a bite, chews, and swallows. "My number is unlisted."

"Exactly," Sheppard says. "Nobody else I know is important enough to have an unlisted number."

Rodney is ridiculously pleased by this. They finish the meal, Sheppard making appreciative comments throughout. As they pile the dishes into the sink, Rodney continues to be plagued by the feeling he has forgotten something very important. "We didn't, I don't know, make plans to do something today, did we? Order tickets over the Internet or something?"

"No." Sheppard is humoring him. "I'm tempted to go to your place and turn the stove on just so you can go home and turn it off. I think it'll make you feel better."

"What will make me feel better," Rodney grumbles, "is figuring this out." And just like that, he remembers. "Out," he says. "You asked me what it was like to be out."

Sheppard looks a little shifty. "Yeah. Was that wrong? Too personal?"

"What? No. Shut up," Rodney says, glad he is no longer drunk, because this is important, and he gets it, finally, which is a relief in many ways. "You asked me what it was like to be _out_ . You didn't ask me what it was like to be _gay_."

"I-" Sheppard says, but Rodney doesn't let him finish, because his subconscious has been working on this all morning, and his subconscious is never wrong. "You idiot," he says, pushing Sheppard back hard against the counter, scattering imported coffee everywhere, "we could have been doing this all along!" And then he is kissing Sheppard, and Sheppard's mouth is opening under his, soft and hot and eager.

"Rodney-" Sheppard says a minute later, flushed and rumpled, his hands still fisted into Rodney's shirt, "I don't think-"

"Now is the time when you should be shutting up instead of thinking," Rodney says. "And believe me when I tell you that I don't say that very often." He kisses him again. "So shut up, John."

Sheppard shuts up, going soft and pliant, leaning in to him in a satisfying way, all flexible except for parts of him that have suddenly become gratifyingly rigid.

"Rodney," he breathes — right into Rodney's ear; holy fuck, hot breath sending shivers up Rodney's spine — "this is an incredibly bad idea."

Rodney does not bother replying to that, because it is clear that Sheppard's body violently disagrees with the words coming out of his mouth. Instead he grabs Sheppard's shirt tighter and tugs, pulling him off the counter, pushing him toward the remains of their picnic lunch scattered on the blanket on the floor.

"Rodney-" Sheppard starts again, but Rodney does not listen.

"Talking later," he says, and pulls Sheppard down right between the salad and the few scattered pieces of pasta. "Sex now."

"Christ," Sheppard says, looking flushed and a little wild with his shirt untucked and his jeans unbuttoned, which, huh, Rodney doesn't actually remember doing. "Rodney, fuck, I can't-"

"John, fuck, you _can_." And he squeezes Sheppard hard through his jeans, feeling a little jolt as Sheppard groans low in his throat, arching into his touch.

Good Lord, he's hard, and Sheppard's looking wanton and gorgeous, erection straining against his fly, lying among the ruins of lunch.

"I'm going to fuck you in the lasagna," Rodney says intently.

Sheppard looks up at him, lust-addled and dazzling. "Okay," he says dazedly. "But if I get thrown out of the Air Force, you are so buying me a plane."

"I'll buy you a plane anyway," Rodney promises. "I'll probably have to sell the Rembrandt to do it."

"Sell the Van Gogh," Sheppard says, and then he says something else, but Rodney doesn't hear what it is, because Sheppard's got his hand down Rodney's pants now, and Rodney's thought patterns fly into complete incoherence.

Some time later, with Sheppard panting underneath him, thrusting restlessly against his leg, fingers roaming hotly all over his body, Rodney has the presence of mind to comment, "I really hope they're not peering through the windows with binoculars."

"I really hope they are," Sheppard says. "I bet we look really hot. Oh fuck," and then he buries his face into Rodney's neck and comes.

"Oh," Rodney says wonderingly, and follows suit. Later he recovers enough to say, "I hope you didn't care about this blanket. It's completely wrecked."

Sheppard grins and throws a squashed tomato at him. "You can buy me a new one. I want cashmere."

By dinnertime, they've had sex twice more, the second time more languid than the first, the third time more inventive and energetic. They have not moved from the blanket, which is now further stained with bodily fluids and tomato sauce, and well past the point of no return.

Sheppard, to Rodney's horror, is picking through the vegetable detritus and eating things. "Oh, now, that's just disgusting," Rodney says, wincing.

"It's broccoli, Rodney," Sheppard says languidly. Most of his body is stained red, and he has bits of pasta in his hair. Rodney would never have guessed that he'd find that to be such a turn-on. "And I'm hungry."

"Then maybe we should shower and get some food for dinner."

Sheppard grins at him. "We've got plenty of food right here."

"Food that we have not had sex in," Rodney clarifies.

"Spoilsport," Sheppard says, and stretches lazily, making the muscles in his abdomen flex in interesting ways. Rodney is captivated.

Sheppard grins at him again. "You're going to give me a complex, McKay."

"You've already got plenty." Rodney rolls over onto his side, the blanket squishing disgustingly beneath him, and props his head up on one hand. "So, for someone so insistent that this was a bad idea, you were pretty enthusiastic."

Sheppard waves a hand through the air. "In for a penny, in for a pound. If I'm going to get thrown out of the Air Force for having gay sex, it might as well be for really fantastic gay sex."

"You're not getting thrown out of the Air Force. You are probably the one person completely immune from getting thrown out of the Air Force. You could probably fuck a sheep in the middle of the SGC and not get thrown out of the Air Force."

"Really?" Sheppard looks disconcertingly interested. "You think?"

"Well," Rodney hedges, "I'm reasonably certain. On the other hand, the risk/reward ratio is fairly high. If you bet wrong, you end up in prison with a bunch of people who will be very interested to learn that you're amenable to having sex with barn animals. And even if you bet right, you will still have to have sex with a sheep."

"Huh," Sheppard says, considering this for a moment. Then he rolls over so he's facing Rodney face to face. "I think I'd rather have sex with you."

"I hope you're speaking theoretically," Rodney says, "because I have to tell you that right now, I am hours away from having sex again, no matter how attractive you look covered in tomato sauce and melted cheese."

Sheppard looks down at the mess on his torso, and runs a finger slowly through it, then dips it into his mouth, deliberately provocative. He wrinkles his nose, which is entirely too appealing. "I don't think that's cheese, Rodney."


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

_Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back._

* * *

 

Sheppard doesn't return to the SGC for nearly a week, by which point he and Rodney have made excellent progress in expanding their sexual repertoire.

"Jesus," Sheppard says, the night before he is due to return to duty, "I haven't had sex this often since I was in college."

Rodney, who has never had this sex this often and suspects Sheppard hasn't either, throws a pillow at him, missing him completely because he is way too tired to aim. "You're making it sound like a bad thing. Stop making it sound like a bad thing."

"It's not a bad thing." Sheppard does not sound convinced.

"You don't sound convinced."

"I am! I'm convinced. I'm completely convinced. It's just, you know, I'm aching in places that shouldn't be aching, and I think my dick is about to go out on strike."

Rodney sympathizes. He has pulled muscles he didn't know he owned, and although mentally he is a big sated pile of goo, physically he is beginning to wish they hadn't been quite so energetic and inventive. In retrospect, he thinks they've been running against the clock, rushing against a deadline they've never acknowledged. "Should we stop?"

"Fuck, yes." Sheppard flops an arm over his eyes. "I'm 39. I don't think I could get it up again tonight even if you paid me. I mean, unless you want a blowjob. I can probably manage that." He does not sound remotely enthusiastic.

Incredibly, the offer of a blowjob is not at all appealing. They have had that much sex. "No. Thanks, but no. That's not what I meant. I meant, should we stop in general?"

Sheppard lifts his arms an inch and gazes at him blearily from the gap. "In general.” There is a short pause during which Rodney imagines he can actually see Sheppard’s brain working, at the end of which Sheppard’s eyes go wide and then narrow, and his expression turns indignant. “You mean, _stop_ stop? Christ, I hope not. I haven't had a chance to be gay for twenty years. I'm not done with it yet. Why would we need to stop?"

"We don't! I don't think we do. It's just, you're going back to work tomorrow."

"You've been going to work all week." Sheppard sounds a little resentful, but Rodney's pretty sure it's a put-on, intended solely to make Rodney feel guilty. After the first all-day sex marathon trashed Sheppard's living room, they retreated to Rodney's apartment, where Sheppard has, since then, been living the life of leisure. He only leaves to go running; he spends the rest of his days surfing the web, playing video games, and reading books from Rodney's extensive library. He has not, to Rodney's knowledge, done a single sudoku puzzle or cryptogram. Rodney thinks Sheppard may never do another sudoku or cryptogram again. Ever. For the rest of his life.

"Well, yes, I know I've been going to work, but I'm not in the Air Force."

Sheppard's arm flops back down. "You know, as far as the Air Force is concerned, the whole gay sex thing is just as damning whether or not you're on vacation."

"True." Sleepily, Rodney considers this for a moment. "But once you're back at work, we won't really have the excuse of you recuperating to explain you being here all the time. I mean, it's one thing while you're on leave, but-"

"Recuperating?" With a groan and a hiss, Sheppard shifts position so he is lying on his side, facing Rodney. "The agents tailing me have seen me running every morning this week. Today I did ten miles. They followed me the whole time. I cut through the park just to piss them off, so one of them had to get out of the car and run after me. I was kind of hoping he'd puke, but he just got a little sweaty in his suit. I guess he works out."

Rodney does not understand why anyone would run ten miles voluntarily, but Sheppard has explained that it relaxes him, the same way Rodney finds writing computer code relaxing — even though Rodney writes computer code in his pajamas on the couch, which is clearly actually relaxing in that it involves no physical exertion whatsoever, while running is the very opposite. Rodney and Sheppard have agreed to disagree on the matter.

Sheppard makes some movement that would be a shrug, if he’d been standing up. “Point is, I think you'd be hard-pressed to make the case that I'm recuperating. Though you might," he adds thoughtfully, "make the case that my apartment has been condemned."

"I hired cleaners," Rodney confesses. "They were there on Tuesday. I'm sure the place is fine by now." He has somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, that apartment was not fit to step foot in, much less live in. On the other, Rodney likes having Sheppard around, and having Sheppard's apartment remain uninhabitable facilitates that goal. But still, there is indiscreet, and there is _indiscreet_. Sheppard staying for a week is the former. Sheppard staying forever is definitely the latter, and also possibly insane. They have known each other for less than six months, of which Sheppard spent a significant portion in the infirmary. They have very little in common except for a love of sushi and bad science fiction, plus the whole gay thing. Admittedly, the whole gay thing is working out really well for them.

Sheppard rolls over onto his stomach, settling in. “It'll be fine, Rodney. I'll go back to my apartment. My clean apartment, thank you very much, and I'll go to work tomorrow and come hang out in your lab, same as always. Except I'll probably be in your lab forever, since they're never going to let me off-planet, like, ever again, and I have nothing else to do.”

“Maybe you can be my assistant,” Rodney says, only half joking. Well, maybe only a quarter joking. Ten percent, tops. The idea of having Sheppard permanently assigned to Rodney’s lab is actually very appealing on multiple levels. Not only would it keep him safe and close by, he is undoubtedly smarter and definitely more aesthetically appealing than other lab assistant Rodney might be assigned, if he were ever assigned an assistant.

“I am not going to be your assistant,” Sheppard says into his pillow. “Calculating square roots and factorials doesn’t actually qualify me to check physics proofs.”

“You aced physics,” Rodney says. He has seen Sheppard’s transcript. It is somewhat scarily bipolar.

“College level, and it was all equations,” Sheppard says. “Not ...” He pulls one hand out from under his pillow and waves it around vaguely. “... whatever scary shit it is that you do.”

“It’s just more equations,” Rodney says. “I could give you a textbook or two. You’d be up to speed in no time.”

Sheppard huffs. “Look, even if I wanted to — which I _don’t_ — Hammond would never agree. I’m sure they’ll find some useless military thing for me to do. Maybe PR work. Carolyn said I was handsome enough for it.”

Rodney feels a surge of thoroughly irrational jealousy. “Who is Carolyn?”

For some reason, Sheppard finds this funny. He laughs, and says, “Carolyn Lam?” as if Rodney should have known. Then he adds, “Doctor Lam? From the infirmary?”

“She said you were handsome? When was this, when she was covering every inch of you with hydrocortisone? Or when she was checking your stitches?” _Or your catheter!_ he thinks, but doesn’t say. He is sometimes capable of recognizing when he’s being irrational, and restraining himself accordingly.

Sheppard laughs again, drowsily. “You’re jealous. That’s sweet.”

“I'm not jealous,” Rodney lies. Then he adds, because he is feeling peevish and petty, “And you’re not handsome enough to model. Your ears are too pointy.”

“I love you too,” Sheppard says, and then falls asleep before Rodney can gather his wits enough to reply.

* * *

Monday morning, Sheppard gets up at oh-godawful-o'clock in the morning and goes for his run, returning at half past the hour, bright-eyed and cheery and in a food-stealing kind of mood. He takes half of Rodney's English muffin in one bite, pours all of the rest of the coffee into Rodney's second-favorite mug, and stands with one hip leaning against the counter. "Work today," he says, unnaturally chipper. "Shouldn't you be getting dressed?"

Rodney checks the clock on the microwave, and then the clock on his laptop, out of habit. They both show the same unacceptable time. "It's not even 7 yet. If you weren't here, I'd still be sleeping."  
  
"I'm not going to be here in a few minutes. You can go back to sleep when I leave."

"One, I'm already up and have opened the laptop, so it is already too late to go back to sleep. My brain is working. And two, why are you not going to be here in a few minutes? You’re never at work before 9."

"They want me in for a medical exam at 7:30. It wouldn't look too good to be late my first day back."

"Blame it on me. Say I delayed you unavoidably."

Sheppard grins, as perky as his hair. He’s eager to get back to work. "Yeah, by having your wicked way with me?"

"I wouldn’t dare. You’d probably admit it.”

“Maybe,” Sheppard says, smirking. “Just for the shock value.”

“Which would be incredibly low,” Rodney says, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You know they will all assume we're sleeping together. Even if they think you're straight, they know I'm not, and you've been staying here all week.”

Sheppard puts down his coffee mug on the counter, with a slightly louder clunk than necessary. "What they assume is their business."

"Hammond and Landry probably know. You realize that, right?"

"Hammond and Landry probably _suspect_. There's a difference. You said you scanned for all kinds of bugs."

"I did,” Rodney says — to his surprise, he had not found any, which either meant that the SGC didn’t bother with bugs because they knew he would find and destroy them, or that they had developed technology that was better than his own, the probability of which he deemed vanishingly small — “but I can't scan for good old-fashioned binoculars out of a car window."

Sheppard rolls his eyes. "Rodney. For a genius, you're a little dense. Do you really think I'd have been careless enough to do anything incriminating in front of an open window?"

"I —" Well, no, when pressed, Rodney thinks Sheppard has probably never been that careless. He's reckless on purpose, but never by accident, and if he wanted to torpedo his career, he'd do it by kissing Rodney in the gateroom so everybody and anybody would know. Sheppard would never put himself into a position to be blackmailed. Although it's a little disconcerting to think that all the times Rodney's thought Sheppard was blinded by lust, he'd still been keeping an eye out for things like open doors and windows. "No."

"Right."

Sheppard leaves a few minutes later without anyone having his wicked way with anyone else. Rodney is only a little disappointed by that. Mostly, he's relieved. It's a barely decent hour to be awake; the only kind of sex that should be had this early in the morning is the solitary jerking-off-in-the-shower kind. Unless, of course, it's a weekend, and you can roll right over and go back to bed. But having the kind of sex Sheppard likes — the rowdy, enthusiastic kind which is likely to leave someone with marks and bruises — is best at night, when you can roll over and go to sleep and not be expected to be coherent for many hours.

Rodney thinks that he might possibly feel different about all of this in a couple of days, when marathon nights of sex have given way to the cold reality of overtime and Sheppard's return to his own residence. Possibly, in a couple of days, Rodney will be happy to have rowdy sex in the morning, even if he does have to go to work afterwards. Stranger things have happened ... like alien invasions, just to name one.

After Sheppard leaves, Rodney gets up and places the dirty coffee mug in the dishwasher. Sheppard leaves them sitting on the counter on purpose, because he knows Rodney's borderline neurotic about some things, and dirty mugs in plain sight are very high up on that list. Rodney wonders if he has some sort of personality defect that makes him tolerate this inexcusable behavior from Sheppard, when he never took it from Sam, whom he was actually married to.

Yes, he decides eventually, tapping absently at the keyboard, he probably does have a personality defect. He may even have several personality defects. But they probably are unrelated to his willingness to tolerate dirty mugs for Sheppard's sake. That is probably just a sign that he is stupidly, hopelessly infatuated.

But hey, Rodney thinks, cheering up, Sheppard seems hopelessly infatuated right back, because two nights ago, he watched _High School Musical_ with Rodney, and Rodney knows, _knows_ , it was killing him the whole time. Rodney whistles his way wetly through his shower, thinking of all the other signs of reciprocated infatuation: Sheppard giving up the morning orange Rodney  knows he swears by as part of his paltry breakfast, Sheppard cooking dinner — or at least, attempting to cook dinner; Rodney grades for results, not effort, but in this case, he'd made an exception because Sheppard had shelled out some of his own money for very good wine, which was unnecessary and sweet, and also Sheppard had given a dire warning as to the quality of the meal, so it's not like he didn't know how nearly inedible it had been — and Sheppard even doing Rodney's laundry. Which, again, was unnecessary and sweet because Rodney has a service for that, and Sheppard only did it because he stained Rodney's shirt while cooking the inedible dinner, but still. Sheppard did Rodney's _laundry_. Rodney purposefully does not include Sheppard’s sleepy “I love you” in his list, because he still hasn’t figured out what to make of it, and the evidence of mutual infatuation is overwhelming even without that.

Rodney's going to be at work in another hour, and the odds are tremendously in his favor that Sheppard will be there in the lab waiting for him when he gets in, or will at the very least appear before lunchtime. Because Sheppard is right; if he's not going off-world, he won't have anything to do. His days before the Cow People were mostly filled with writing reports about planets he'd been to or reading reports filled with advance intel about planets they were going to. Rodney is unclear exactly what Sheppard’s days post-Cow People are going to consist of — he does not seriously believe Sheppard will be doing PR — but Rodney can’t imagine Sheppard’s duties will be anything that will lessen the amount of time he has in which to loaf around Rodney’s office being attractive and bratty.

Sheppard is not in fact in Rodney's office when Rodney arrives, bearing Starbucks coffee and muffins in addition to a slightly off-color "welcome back" card which he has been saving for nearly a month for just this occasion. Rodney is so thrown by Sheppard’s unexpected absence that — though he will deny this to the death — he actually bends down and looks under the lab benches, thinking Sheppard is playing a practical joke.

Sheppard is not to be found under the lab bench, and Rodney stands there for a minute, blinking stupidly at the empty lab, before he turns around and checks the sign on the door to make sure he is in the right place. The sign on the door assures him that this is his lab, but on turning back around, the lab is still mysteriously Sheppard-free.

Rodney is the sort who likes to plan his day out in advance when possible, and this day had been supposed to start with the giving of the gag card to Sheppard, along with coffee and muffin. Sheppard would drink the coffee and nibble at the muffin, and then Rodney would, after finishing his own muffin, eat the rest of Sheppard’s, all while running some very vital experiments to prove a pet theory he’s been hoarding. Sheppard’s absence has derailed Rodney’s plan from the very first step.

Irritated, Rodney leaves the coffee, muffins and card on the lab bench next to the highly classified and potentially unstable experimental construct he’s been putting together, and stalks out of the lab towards Sheppard’s office. Rodney has never been in Sheppard’s office while Sheppard is actually there, but he has been there by himself once before when Sheppard was in the infirmary, to pick up a book of sudoku puzzles that was stashed away in a desk drawer, otherwise empty except for a chewing gum wrapper and a lone pencil eraser.

On the way, Rodney works his way up to a good rant. Sheppard never spent any time in his office before he and Rodney started sleeping together. It would be ridiculous for Sheppard to start spending time there now. It would be more than ridiculous. It would look suspicious, especially since Sheppard just spent the week holed up in Rodney’s apartment.

His rant dies unuttered on his lips when he gets to Sheppard’s office and flings the door open dramatically, only to find the room as Sheppard-free as his own lab. In fact, there is no evidence that Sheppard has been there since Rodney retrieved the magazine, which is one part comforting and two parts disturbing, because if Sheppard is not in Rodney’s lab and he is not in his office, then where is he? It is past 9, which means Sheppard has had plenty of time to check in with Lam, and realistically, there is nowhere else in the mountain Sheppard would want to go.

Maybe, Rodney thinks in horror, maybe Lam was able to detect the recent sexual activity, and she felt compelled to report Sheppard, and he has already been arrested. Rodney would have hoped that illicit gay sexual activity would be protected by doctor-patient confidentiality, but maybe  doctor-patient confidentiality doesn’t apply to military doctors, especially to military doctors who are the daughters of presidents. Or maybe all that enthusiastic sex gave Sheppard a relapse, pulled open a stitch or something, and Lam has readmitted him to the infirmary for another eight weeks.

Worse, maybe Rodney and Sheppard and Lorne were wrong, and Sheppard is not to be grounded permanently. Maybe he’s preparing right now to go through the gate. Maybe he’s already gone through the gate. Maybe he has already been shot again, because god knows, Sheppard attracts enough trouble that it’s possible he’d get shot within an hour of arriving on a new planet, and maybe he’ll need more surgery! No. No. Rodney tells himself that he has gone past his normal levels of irrationality to full-out crazy.  Even Sheppard can't have managed to get shot on an alien planet within 90 minutes of returning to active duty. No, probably Sheppard is still in the infirmary for some other reason entirely. 

Rodney manages to come up with twenty separate reasons for Sheppard to have been delayed in the infirmary, all equally horrible, but when he gets there, he discovers that Sheppard is nowhere to be found. Lam looks up from where she making notations on a clipboard, with an amused smirk playing on her lips. “He was here at 0730, Dr. McKay. Right on time and healthy as a horse.”

“Oh,” Rodney says, deflating. He is not exactly disappointed that none of his more dire imaginings have come to pass. He looks at Lam suspiciously. “Did you clear him to go off-world?”

Lam gives him a quirky smile. “Please. You’re far smarter than that. You and I both know that Major Sheppard isn’t going off-world again.”

Rodney crosses his arms and stares at her accusingly, even though he is indignant only on Sheppard’s behalf, not his own. “Because your father won’t let him.”

Lam inclines her head just a little bit in agreement. “Because my father won’t let him.” That little quirky smile flashes on and off. “To be honest, it’s a little bit of a relief. We were running out of hydrocortisone. Do you know, we haven’t had a single case of contact dermatitis since he was shot.”

“Good for you,” Rodney says sourly. “I’m sure Major Sheppard will be pleased to hear it.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Lam says, turning away, “I told him as soon as he came in this morning. Why don’t you try your lab, Dr. McKay? That’s where _I’d_ go looking for him if I couldn’t find him.”

Rodney mutters something unflattering at her back, and stalks irritably out the infirmary. He stops by the cafeteria and the gym, but Sheppard is not in either place. Grumbling, Rodney heads back to his lab just in case Sheppard has appeared in the past fifteen minutes, but the lab is still empty, the muffins are untouched, and the coffee is cold. Growling under his breath, he picks up the phone and forces his way through the automated directory system to get a number for Evan Lorne, who picks up on the second ring with a crisp, “Lorne.”

“McKay,” Rodney snaps back. “Where’s Sheppard?”

There is a very long, very careful pause. “He’s not with you?” Lorne sounds doubtful.

“No,” Rodney says witheringly, “he is not with me.”

“Obviously,” Lorne continues tentatively, as if his thought processes are actually that slow, “or you wouldn’t be calling. But. I just assumed... have you checked your lab?”

“I am in my lab,” Rodney says, with forced patience. “He is not here.”

“Huh.” There is another longish pause. “Have you checked his office?”

“Assume,” Rodney says, “that I checked in every obvious location before I was reduced to calling you.”

Lorne is palpably thinking. Rodney can practically smell the brain fumes over the phone line. “Well,” Lorne says slowly, “have you tried leaving him a voicemail?”

“I seriously doubt,” Rodney grinds out, “that Sheppard is even aware that he _has_ voicemail. You are no help. If you happen to stumble into Sheppard in the hall, tell him I’m looking for him.” Then he slams the phone down and takes an angry bite out of the bigger muffin, telling himself that he is _not_ worried, just annoyed that his careful plans have fallen apart.

Five minutes later, the muffin and cold coffee are gone, and Rodney is still grumpy. He rearranges a few crystals in the device on his lab bench before giving up and leaving the lab again. There is no point staying there, when he has been looking forward for a week to things getting back to normal, with Sheppard in the lab while Rodney works.

It doesn’t take him very long to recheck every single spot where Sheppard could conceivably be, and few where he couldn’t possibly be — because this is Sheppard, after all, who regards impossibilities as mere inconveniences to be worked around — before returning to his lab, where Sheppard has still not yet appeared. In a snit, Rodney eats the second muffin and pours the second cup of coffee down the sink, tossing the muffin wrapper and the cup in the trash so there is no evidence they ever existed.

“I hope you’re happy,” he mutters to no one, and opens the least interesting project file he is working on, hoping to bore himself into insensibility. It does not work; two minutes in he finds a glaring mathematical error in one of his proofs, and he gets irritated with Sheppard all over again because had he been here for the past couple of months, not absent while recuperating, he would have checked Rodney’s math and found the error before Rodney had completed another ten pages of proof based on a faulty assumption.

Fuming, he deletes the whole thing and starts over, and is soon immersed despite himself, because with the equation correct, the math actually takes off in an interesting direction, and it is just possible the interuniversal bridge might actually be a viable method of transferring zero point energy after all, huh. He is concentrating so deeply, in fact, that he doesn’t hear the door to the lab open, and is completely unaware that he is no longer alone until he feels a breath of air ghost across his neck and a perky, “boo!”

Rodney jolts up in his seat and turns around to glare at the love of his life/bane of his existence. “You’re late,” he accuses. “I worried, and stress-ate your muffin.”

“You got me a muffin?” Sheppard says.

“I did,” Rodney snips. “But I ate it all. Here. I got you a card too. Where were you?”

Sheppard is reading the card, one eyebrow high, and he looks very amused when he is done. “You know I got shot,” he says. “I didn’t have appendicitis.”

“They didn’t have a card that said, ‘So glad your bullet wounds healed okay,” Rodney says in a huff. “You didn’t answer my question. Where were you? Your coffee got cold so I poured it down the sink.”

Sheppard looks taken aback. “You know,” he says, “they have these amazing things called microwaves that heat up liquids when they’ve gone cold. I was in with Hammond. I think he hates me.”

“He’s just jealous of your hair. Are they assigning you to another gate team?”

“No,” Sheppard says sourly. “You knew they wouldn’t.” He sits down on one of the stools and spins around grumpily. “He wants to send me to Area 51.”

Rodney stares, speechless. This had not been on his list of Horrible Things That Might Have Happened To Sheppard.

“I know,” Sheppard says. “Believe me, I’m not any happier about it than you are.”

Rodney eventually manages to shut his mouth, though the click his jaw makes when he does so is ominous. Sheppard just sits there and twirls around looking miserable.

“Is it because of ... you know,” Rodney says, making an indistinct gesturing motion between the two of them.

“No,” Sheppard says. “I don’t think so. Hammond’s got a stick up his ass about a lot of things, but that’s not one of them.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Rodney asks. 

Sheppard shrugs. “It’s one more thing for him to hold over me, yeah, but that’s just convenient. I don’t think he actually cares.” He kicks listlessly at the leg of the table, threatening to topple one of the more painstakingly placed components of Rodney’s experiment. “At least here I got to go on missions sometimes. At Area 51, all I’m going to be doing is turning things on and off all day. Touch this, Major Sheppard. Think at that, Major Sheppard. Jesus.” He shudders. “It’s like my worst nightmare.”

“I thought your nightmares were about clowns,” Rodney says.

Sheppard glares at him. “Not helpful, McKay.”

Uh oh. If they are back to “McKay,” Sheppard is in a serious snit.

“Look,” Rodney says, trying to keep his voice light and even and free from despair. “We will work it out. It’s not that far away-”

“It’s 850 fucking miles,” Sheppard shoots back.

“But still on Earth,” Rodney says. “Compared to any other planet, that’s extremely close, In a strictly relative manner.”

Sheppard throws a pencil at him. “That’s not even — look, it’s not that _this_ —” he imitates Rodney’s vague hand motion, “— doesn’t matter. It matters. But that’s not ... it’s fucking _Nevada_ , Rodney.” He scowls furiously. “I hate Nevada.”

Rodney is stupidly, immaturely pleased that their thing-which-is-not-classified matters to Sheppard, because it has come to matter to Rodney a lot. Also, he determines that when Sheppard is looking less lethal, the story of Nevada will have to be prised out of him. But that is for another day, when alcohol can be imbibed, and also, when this immediate crisis has passed. “Okay,” Rodney says. “We can solve this. All we need to do is figure out some reason why it is critical for you to stay here.”

Sheppard’s expression does not de-lethalize in the slightest. “There is no reason that it is critical for me to stay here. If there were some reason, I probably wouldn’t mind staying, since it would mean I’d have something interesting to do.” He scowls furiously. “You realize the best case scenario is me staying here in your lab checking your math, right?”

Rodney decides prudence is called for, and does not say that in fact Sheppard staying safely in Cheyenne Mountain checking Rodney’s math is pretty much Rodney’s definition of the best case scenario, since clearly it is not as appealing to Sheppard. However, it would be out of character not to say anything snippy, so he says, “Hey, at least you’ve never gotten poison ivy in my lab.”

Sheppard scowls harder and kicks the table again, this time, Rodney’s experiment actually starts to collapse, and that is the end of this particular conversation.


	5. Chapter 5

_I shall be telling this with a sigh_

* * *

 

Sheppard does in fact get sent to Area 51, over his very vehement and expletive-laden protests. That he should stay in Colorado to check Rodney’s math is never seriously considered (though Rodney suggests it no less than three times); Landry finally tells him that if he’s so desperate for peer review, Peter Kavanagh has indicated he’d be willing. As much of an idiot as Kavanagh is, he is clearly more qualified for the position that Sheppard, but since Rodney will allow Kavanagh in his lab only over his dead and decomposing body, he opts never to bring it up again.

Sheppard’s exile is both more and less of a catastrophe than it seems (to Sheppard). It is less of a catastrophe because Rodney is making significant promise on the modifications to the interuniversal bridge, and it is a development that, finally, has the potential to actually make a difference in the war they are fighting. If he can get it to work — a big if, admittedly, but he is always optimistic about his ability to solve any given physics problem — they will have an almost infinite supply of zero point energy, and that might actually give them the edge against the Ori. Rodney would not have expected Sheppard’s absence to be any sort of aid to this cause — he would have expected the opposite, in fact — but the truth is that Sheppard is _safe_ in Area 51, and that means all the brain power Rodney typically expends on worrying about Sheppard is now free for other useful activity.

However, Sheppard being sent to Nevada is also more of a catastrophe because Sheppard seems bent on self-destructing, though the tools available with which he can do so are fewer. There are no off-world missions out of Area 51, and the facility is guarded and shielded to an absurd degree; Sheppard cannot get so much as a paper cut, it seems, without the cadre of junior officers assigned to guard him leaping forward to (1) shred the offending piece of paper, (2) burn the entire ream from which the sheet of paper originated, just in case there are other similarly hostile pages lurking about, and (3) hustle Sheppard off to the infirmary where Carson Beckett (also being stored for safety in Area 51) can apply massive quantities of of antibiotics and bandages to Sheppard’s whole hand.

“It’s a bandaid,” Rodney says over video chat, only half focused on the Sheppard’s mournful image on the screen. “It’s a little baby bandaid on your pinkie. Do you think it’s possible you’re overreacting slightly?”

“No,” Sheppard says mutinously, and cuts the connection.

Rodney sighs and debates for only a moment before adding “papercut” to his list of injuries that Sheppard has sustained since leaving for Nevada. To what end Sheppard is pursuing this course, Rodney is unclear. Sheppard has not managed to harm himself sufficiently that he will be discharged — Rodney imagines the only way the military will let go of Sheppard is when he is dead, and maybe not even then — nor has he irritated the Area 51 personnel enough that he will get sent back to Cheyenne Mountain. Beckett has told Rodney that in fact the officers in Area 51 all actually seem to like Sheppard, despite his efforts to make himself seem disagreeable.

This is no surprise to Rodney. Sheppard is all easy charm and lazy smiles when he’s around people he doesn’t know well; he’s likeable even when he’s not trying to be. Sheppard is fully aware of this personality flaw but seems unable to turn it off except under extreme circumstances (like when he’s trapped in a hospital bed for weeks at a time, or when he’s sulking because Rodney ran out of coffee, which happened _only once_ and it is ridiculous that Sheppard will not let him live it down).

At any rate, the point is that Sheppard has racked up an impressive array of bumps and bruises and scrapes and even one cracked rib (from skateboarding in the facility, which Rodney has on good authority is absolutely not allowed), and it’s driving Rodney crazy because he can’t figure out the _point_ . Nobody is getting injured except Sheppard, and nobody seems to care about Sheppard’s injuries except Rodney. Unless, Rodney thinks, musing, Sheppard has made it his mission to drive Rodney insane out of some sort of petty vindictiveness — Sheppard is irritated that he was sent out to pasture, but he is _infuriated_ that Rodney was not sent along too.

Sheppard’s self-destructive streak is not confined to inflicting minor physical injuries on himself; he has taken to calling Rodney “dear” and “honey” on their phone calls, and Rodney supposes that they haven’t yet been arrested only because no one seems to find it plausible that Sheppard is actually being serious.Which he is not, of course; Sheppard’s true pet names for Rodney are invariably far more crude. Rodney counts himself lucky that Sheppard has not seen fit to use any of _those_ in public.Yet. It might possibly depend on his mood, which grows fouler as his assignment to Area 51 extends and extends. So there is a possibility that one of Sheppard’s nicknames will make it out of the bedroom. Rodney only hopes that that will happen after the Ori have successfully invaded, when it won’t matter so much.

“People are dying,” Sheppard says one day, in a rare moment of candor wherein he actually tells Rodney what is bothering him. “Millions of them, all over the galaxy. And what are we doing? We’re hiding.”

“We’re trying to find a way to defeat the Ori,” Rodney says.

“ _You_ are,” Sheppard says, bitter. “ _I_ am just sitting here turning on Ancient Waterpiks.”

“You don’t actually know that was a Waterpik.”

“You don’t know it wasn’t,” Sheppard says glumly. “I am so goddamn sick of this place, Rodney. I think I’m going to blow it up. I’m stockpiling fuses.”

It is never good when Sheppard starts talking about blowing places up, though it happens with some regularity. Rodney never takes the actual threat seriously — if Sheppard was going to blow something up, it would have been when he was trapped in the infirmay — but still, it does not bode well. Immediate intervention is required. “Don’t be stupid. They’ll just send you someplace worse. Look, I’ll come visit. I’ll say I have to work with whatshisname, Zelonka, in person.”

Sheppard scowls at him and scratches his chin. He is growing a beard in flagrant disregard for regulations. Rodney is going to see to it that he shaves. He looks like a mountain man. Mountain men are not Rodney’s type.

“If you say you have to work with him in person, you’ll actually have to work with him in person.”

“I can work with other people,” Rodney huffs.

Sheppard raises an eyebrow skeptically. “Other people besides me?”

“Yes!” Rodney says. “I ran a company. I had underlings. I worked with them.”

“Ordering peons around is not the same thing as working with people,” Sheppard says. Then he gives Rodney the stink-eye, reproachfully. “And it turns out that Zelenka is not actually an idiot.”

Zelenka is _mostly_ not an idiot, Rodney concedes in person the following week, after a weekend in which he and Sheppard did very little that did not involve a bed (or activities that would most properly occur in a bed, but might occur improperly in many other spots, if you were open-minded), other than the occasional foray out for food to prove to people that they were not actually staying in all weekend having wild gay sex. Whether or not they convinced anyone is debatable, but at least everyone at the base has plausible deniability, or so Sheppard claims.

“He may have a little bit of an idea what he’s doing,” Rodney admits over lunch. The morning was spent working in Area 51’s labs, and Rodney was careful not to order other people around too much, and to smile at least once an hour. He set a timer on his watch, just in case. “But Kavanagh is actually more of an idiot than I thought he was, which should be impossible, considering the degree of idiocy I was already attributing to him.”

“If he’s such an idiot,” Sheppard says lazily — still mellow after the weekend’s pleasantries — “why does he still have a job here?”

Rodney grunts. “Clearly he’s paying someone off. Or maybe it’s blackmail.” He takes a vindictive bite of his lasagna (and no, he is not thinking inappropriate thoughts about Sheppard just because they are eating lasagna, even though lasagna is now inextricably intertwined in his mind with thoughts of messy cheese-and-tomato sex). “But Zapinka, now-”

“ _Zelenka_ ,” Sheppard says with a scowl.  
  
“Whatever. He’s actually less useless than I thought.”

“High praise.”

“Mmm. He’s been working on a method of replicating the functionality of ZPMs.”

Sheppard scrunches his forehead. “I will never get used to that ‘zed’ thing.”

Rodney ignores him. “He’s actually fairly close to working out how to mimic the energy containment fields. Which, in and of itself, isn’t especially useful, since we don’t have a source of zero point energy to charge the batteries, so to speak. But if I can just figure the appropriate modifications to the interuniversal bridge —”

“You can build us more ZPMs.” Sheppard stares at him. “Jesus, Rodney.”

“I know, I know.” Rodney grins, full of wholesome self-satisfaction. “It’s incredible, I know, and knowing that you can appreciate just how incredible it is makes the fact that I’m sleeping with you all that much more satisfying.” Then, to Sheppard’s somewhat bemused blink, Rodney adds, “Because many of my previous sexual partners — excepting Sam, of course — wouldn’t have truly understood how much of an achievement this actually is. I mean, it would just be another amazing feat that I’ve accomplished, and while it’s gratifying that everyone’s opinion of me is so high as to expect that I can pull miracles literally out of thin air, it’s far more satisfying when someone can differentiate the everyday accomplishments from the times when I actually do pull off something miraculous.”

Sheppard’s mouth twists slightly. “Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you, Rodney? You haven’t actually figured it out yet.”

Rodney waves that objection away with an airy twist of his wrist. “I’m practically done. The rest is just technicalities.”

The rest is not just technicalities. Weeks pass, Rodney is ensconced back in his Sheppard-free laboratory in Cheyenne Mountain, free to work all day and night, but the math stubbornly refuses to resolve into something workable. Rodney comes close to burning all his research before he is talked down by Lorne, who stumbles across him pouring lighter fluid into a trashcan filled with paper.

“You know,” Lorne says, pulling him carefully out of the room, “all your research is stored on the servers and backed up every night.”

“It would be symbolic,” Rodney mutters darkly. “And I can hack the servers if I need to.”

“Mmm,” Lorne hums. He walks Rodney to the mess hall where he sits him down with a power bar and a cup of decaf — “I think you’ve had enough caffeine today, Dr. McKay” — and makes him promise not to do anything rash.

Rodney agrees to this only grudgingly, but does consent to stay away from his lab until the next day, to “give yourself a little bit of a break, all right?”

That afternoon he gets a call from a very pissed off Sheppard —“What the hell were you thinking? Evan just about had a heart attack!” — and has to admit he is totally blocked, and isn’t sure there is a way to direct the bridge to a particular universe, unless that universe is reaching out to form a bridge from the other side.

Sheppard is quiet on the other end of the line. “And if you can’t direct the bridge ...”

“It will connect to some random universe, yes. Which is a bad idea. I told you that story Carter told me.”

“About the two Rodney McKays, yeah.” He’s quiet again. “You know Landry would think it’s an acceptable risk to take.”

“Well, I don’t,” Rodney says. “I’m not destroying another universe just to save our own. We find an uninhabited universe or we don’t do it at all.”

Sheppard sighs. “Well, just keep working at it, Rodney.”

Rodney keeps working at it, but in the back of his mind there is always Sheppard’s quiet, “People are dying,” and he can’t help wondering how _many_ are dying each day that he fails to figure it out.

To his supreme irritation, Sheppard takes matters into his own hands, and arrives one morning in Cheyenne Mountain with Jeannie — _Jeannie!_ — in tow. “Meredith,” she says coolly. “Special advisor to the President.” Every syllable is dripping with loathing, and Rodney shoots Sheppard a nasty look.

“I didn’t think we were on speaking terms with Canada,” he says. “Do you need a special visa to get a harpy across the border, or did she just fly over and meet you on the other side?”

Sheppard raises his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m just the one they sent to meet her at the airport,” he says, but he is lying, lying, that is his lying face, and Rodney knows it like he knows the map of all the freckles on the back of Sheppard’s left shoulder. _I will make you pay for this,_ he mouths at Sheppard behind Jeannie’s back, but Sheppard just mouths back _suck it up, Meredith,_ and sneaks out of the room, the bastard.

The afternoon is long and horrid, and Rodney takes out his frustrations by despoiling Sheppard’s virtue that night. Multiple times.

“I think,” Sheppard muses drowsily, already half asleep, “your sister is onto us. She kept asking if we were _friends_ , and staring at me.”

Rodney yawns and stretches. “She’s not onto us. She only asked because she thinks I’m incapable of having friends.”

Sheppard makes that horrible noise that is his laugh. “You _are_ incapable of having friends. I don’t count.” Then he pokes Rodney in the belly, and shifts around to find a more comfortable position. “Just give it a try, Rodney. Let her help. Even you’ve said she’s almost as smart as you.”

Rodney is indignant. “I never said that!” But it is too late, because Sheppard beside him is breathing deep and easy, fast asleep.

* * *

 

Having Jeannie around turns out to be the most effective motivator yet, though Rodney will not admit this to anyone on pain of death, except Sheppard, who has somehow managed to find an excuse to stay in Colorado for a full week. Rodney’s not sure what he’s doing besides harassing Lorne, but whatever it is, it’s keeping him out of Rodney’s lab and away from the harridan that is Dr. Jeannie McKay Miller, Dean of Physics at McGill University.

“It’s a nightmare,” Rodney grumbles. They are having a late dinner. Rodney’s head is aching from having ground his teeth all day, and he is certain that twinge in his jaw is TMJ. “It’s like my entire childhood all over again, except with better computers. If I have to work with her much longer, one of us will wind up dead. And as loath as I am to admit it, she is the better shot, so the corpse will probably be me.”

Sheppard pats his hand. “If you hate her so much, Rodney, figure out how to make the damn bridge work the way you want it, and she’ll go back home to that historian guy.”

“That was your brilliant plan all along, wasn’t it,” Rodney says, narrowing his eyes. “To goad me into a breakthrough by forcing me to work with the one person on this planet I despise more than Kavanagh?”

Sheppard lifts an eyebrow. “Well, bribing you with sex wasn’t working. And anyway, you’re exaggerating. There is no one on this planet you despise more than Kavangh.” He plucks a bread crust from Rodney’s plate and dips it in the gravy, which is so unsanitary Rodney shudders. “She’s not so bad, really. People say she reminds them of you, you know.”

“She’s nothing like me,” Rodney huffs indignantly.

“Well, she’s certainly got better hair.”

Rodney does not dignify this with a response.

* * *

 

The next morning, Jeannie is waiting for him in the lab looking highly self-satisfied. “I knew it,” she says, pointing at him triumphantly. For a horrible moment, Rodney isn’t sure whether she is gloating about having (somehow) confirmed Rodney’s illicit relationship with Sheppard, or whether she has solved the problem of the matter bridge while Rodney was busy having an illicit relationship with Sheppard. The moment is horrible not so much for the uncertainty, but because Rodney cannot decide which of the two outcomes is least palatable.

It turns out to be neither; Jeannie is gloating because she has stumbled across one of his old academic papers in which he might have, possibly, perhaps, used one of the proofs that she might have, possibly, perhaps, derived when she was in grade 10 and Rodney was in graduate school. Rodney tries to convince her that she derived the proof when he was helping her study for a physics exam, but Jeannie, shrew that she is, laughs herself into a case of the hiccups at the thought that he might ever have helped her study for anything. “Oh, Mer,” she says, diaphram spasming, “you’re so delusional. It’s kind of sweet, really.”

This is the nicest thing she has said to him in about ten years. He rewards her by shouting loudly in her ear to startle her out of the hiccups, which doesn’t work but is nonetheless immensely satisfying.

The morning improves after that, because Jeannie eventually admits that the reason she was looking at Rodney’s old physics paper is that it might hold the key to their problem with the matter bridge. Rodney is irritated that he didn’t think of it first, but takes consolation in the fact that, even if Jeannie had the insight to look at his old paper, and even if he used a proof of dubious provenance — (“Oh, for god’s sakes, Mer, you’re _impossible._ ”) — the physics he’d done in the paper is absolutely solid and might in fact be the key they’re looking for.

“If this works,” he says, starting up a very promising simulation, “you might be home for dinner with whatshisname and Samson tomorrow.”

Jeannie stares at him stonily. “ _Mason_ ,” she says. “Your nephew’s name is Mason.”

Rodney waves his hand airily. “Whatever. It’s not like I ever see him to call him the wrong name.” Then he pauses, and looks guiltily at his sister, who is scowling so fiercely she looks like ... well, she looks exactly like their father, actually, which is not a compliment. “I mean, it’s not like he’d care, since he’s so little.”

Jeannie sighs. “He’s five. You’re such an idiot, Meredith.”

Her tone of voice is actually ... not quite hostile, making this the second nicest thing she’s said to him in ten years. Rodney feels an unexpected rush of warmth, but squashes it down. He is using all his fuzzy feelings on Sheppard, and can’t risk spreading them thin by wasting them on other people.

“Are you serious?” Sheppard says over lunch in the canteen, to which he has bodily dragged Rodney, to Jeannie’s great amusement. “You think you’ve actually solved it?”

“I think there is an excellent chance,” Rodney says. “We’re running simulations now.”

Sheppard stares at him. “I am seriously considering kissing you right here,” he says, and Rodney knows Sheppard is just rash enough to actually consider it.

“I would rather not get thrown in military prison right as I’m about to solve the most important physics problem in the history of the universe,” he says. “Save it for later. Except if this actually works, I expect a hell of a lot more than a kiss.”

“I will give you the best goddamn blowjob of your life,” Sheppard says.

Rodney squints at him, because it is entirely possible that Sheppard is not actually lying, which means he has been holding out on Rodney all this time. “Hmmph,” is all he says, because it will not do to appear over-eager. Sheppard’s ego is quite big enough, thank you very much. Then he says, in a masterful non sequitor, “Is it weird I keep forgetting my nephew’s name?”

Sheppard is unperturbed by the random shift in topic. Rodney supposes he’s used to it by now. Sheppard shrugs and pops a cube of Beef Wellesley into his mouth, mumbling, “I don’t know my nephew’s name either. Or my niece’s.” He chews, looking thoughtful. “At least, I’m pretty sure the second one’s a niece.”

Rodney stares. “You have a niece and nephew? You have _siblings_?”

Sheppard nods and takes more beef. He will probably go back for seconds. Sheppard is a pushover for any food wrapped in puff pastry, not that Rodney can blame him, because puff pastry is fantastic. “One brother,” Sheppard says around the food. That would not be endearing on anyone else, but on Sheppard it’s somehow charming. He swallows. “David. He’s a dick. I haven’t spoken to him in like ten years.”

Rodney thinks this is just more evidence that he and Sheppard are meant to be, because anyone else admitting to a decade-long estrangement with his only sibling might sound at least a little embarrassed about it, but Sheppard seems as if he honestly could not care less.

“To be fair to David,” Sheppard adds thoughtfully, “he’d probably say that I’m the dick.” He shrugs. “We’re probably both dicks. That’s about the only thing we have in common. He sends me Christmas cards every year, but he doesn’t even sign them.” Now he looks indignant. Well, slightly indignant, noticeable only to someone accustomed to Sheppard’s muted emotional displays.

“Jeannie doesn’t send me any cards,” Rodney says. “I think it’s because I kept sending them back unopened. Let it never be said that she can’t take a hint.”

“If you figure out how to create ZPMs,” Sheppard says, “I think you ought to consider sending her a card this year. Just a suggestion. But, you know, if you _do_ figure it out, it might be worth a Hallmark.”

There are no immediate trips to the card store, because the morning’s simulation does not work. This irritates Rodney inordinately, not solely because his hopes for a spectacular blowjob are crushed. Still, the math is more promising than it has been in ages, and Sheppard is staying in Colorado for another three days, and they are so _close_. Rodney goes home that night unaccountably cheery, though he stops whistling when it earns him a funny look from Lorne.

The night with Sheppard is very enjoyable, even without the best blowjob of Rodney’s life. “I wish you didn’t have to go back to Nevada,” Rodney says drowsily, as they lay in bed, pleasantly sated. Sheppard’s feet are warm on the backs of Rodney’s calves, and his breath is warm against Rodney’s neck. “If we can make new ZPMs, do you think they’ll let you stay in Colorado?”

Sheppard hmms against his skin. “Dunno,” he says lazily. “If you can power the chair, they’ll make me go back to use it. But if we can defeat the Ori? Who knows.”

Rodney lies there and just breaths for a few minutes. “Would you leave the Air Force? If you could, I mean. After.”  
They’ve discussed this many times before, of course, and each time Rodney ends up promising to buy Sheppard a plane, but it seems closer, now. More plausible. Sheppard realizes it too, because his answer takes a long time to come. “I don’t know,” he says. “I always thought I’d be in the Air Force forever. I can’t really imagine .... just build the ZPM, Rodney. Let’s get rid of the Ori first, and figure out what comes after, after.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Errr, hi. :: waves sheepishly :: Sorry this took so long. I was blocked like a hugely blocked thing. But hey! Unblocked! And finished! :)

* * *

_I took the one less traveled by,_  
_And that has made all the difference._

* * *

 

Rodney wakes in the morning to find Sheppard gone already, and a text message from Jeannie telling him to get his fat ass into the lab. Rodney does not send back a biting comment about the relative size of their asses. One thing he learned from having been married to Samantha Carter is that it is never, ever okay to comment on the size of a female’s rear end, unless it can in no possible way be interpreted as anything but a compliment — and even then, it’s dicey; it’s dicey even if the comment has, as in this case, been provoked.

When Rodney gets into the lab, Jeannie hands him a donut. “Tim Horton’s,” she says. “Caleb sent them.”

Rodney eyes the donut suspiciously. “What is this, a peace offering for the ass comment?”

“It’s a donut,” she says, but she does not roll her eyes. Rodney is afraid for just a minute that she’s been taken over by a go’auld, but no. He does not think even the strongest symbiote could drill through Jeannie’s skull.

Rodney grabs the donut, but does not moan when he eats it, out of spite.

Jeannie waits until he is finished swallowing before she says, “I have an idea.”

She says it in just _that_ way, with just _that_ look, the one that has gotten the two of them into more trouble than probably any other siblings in the world, the look that landed them in the laps of the CSIS when they were still in grade school, and at the heart of an Interpol investigation before Rodney’s voice had finished changing. It is a fact of Rodney’s existence that, no matter how he would like to deny it, he and Jeannie working together toward a common goal have never failed to achieve it. “Well,” he says, rolling up his sleeves, “let’s hear it.”

She tells him, and Rodney has to admit, it’s brilliant, and moreover, it’s feasible. (Rodney has had many brilliant ideas, but most of them were utterly impossible — “which makes them less than brilliant, Mer” — an assessment Rodney disagrees with on principle, because brilliance is brilliance, though he concedes that some brilliant ideas are more helpful than others.)  Once Rodney has worked out the theory behind Jeannie’s frankly scary leap of logic, the math falls into place quickly and neatly and so obviously that he doesn’t understand how they didn’t see it before (he blames Jeannie — well, no. He blames Kavanagh). And this is why they are so perfect together, this is why they could destroy the world if they wanted, because they fill in each other’s gaps perfectly; he suspects sometimes that the only reason the world hasn’t been destroyed yet is that the two of them generally can’t stand being in the same room for more than a few minutes, which makes plotting world destruction difficult.

“It will work,” Jeannie says, standing over his shoulder and biting her nails while he finishes up the code.

“It will work.” Rodney is sure they are right, but still, his fingers are trembling as he starts the simulation. If it works, they will be able to direct the interuniveral bridge to a gloriously unoccupied universe, and pull the power they need to charge the mock-ZPMs Zelenka has been building and stockpiling in Nevada, optimistic in a way no self-respecting Czech should be. With ZPMs, they can use the chair to send an energy pulse directly into the Ori’s dimension, and wipe it out without harming their own dimension at all.. If it works, if it works ... it _has_ to work. Rodney is out of other ideas.

The simulation is excruciatingly slow. Rodney paces and eats two more donuts and drinks three cups of coffee before Jeannie makes him sit down. “Do I have to call John?” she asks, and she is actually smiling. Well, smirking, but for Jeannie the two expressions are about the same.

“Stop being nice,” he says. “It’s very disturbing.”

“I expect an invitation to the wedding,” she says mildly.

“Oh my god, shut _up_ ,” he hisses. He doesn’t bother trying to deny it; there is no chance that he would be able to convince her that he and John are not dating, or whatever gay men just shy of 40 call it.

“Oh come on,” she says. “We’re about to defeat the alien invaders. He’s going to shoot the Ori out of the sky with a chair powered by ZPMs that you will get at least 40% of the credit for designing.”

“Forty percent!” he splutters, but she ignores him.

“Do you really think anybody’s going to care that you’re sleeping together? Trust me, Mer, nobody will. I’m just glad you found somebody who could put up with you.”

The simulation finishes before Rodney has a chance to reply. And it works. It _works_.

* * *

 

It is not really anticlimactic after that, because having a working simulation is far from having a working ZPM, but Rodney has always excelled at putting into practice ideas that work in theory. Now that the theoretically interesting part is done, Jeannie cites family obligations and goes back to Canada — Rodney actually gives her a hug when she leaves, and it is only half as horribly awkward as it could have been, because he practiced with Sheppard the night before — and Rodney flies to Nevada with Sheppard because Zelenka is there and the chair is there, and nobody wants to waste any time between building a functional ZPM and putting Sheppard’s butt into the chair.

Rodney gains five pounds in the week it takes them to finish the control program for the bridge. “I stress-eat,” Rodney says acidly to Sheppard, who is squinting at Rodney’s stomach and making an expression that Rodney can’t interpret. “You know this.”

“Five pounds in a week is a lot of stress,” Sheppard says mildly. He is brushing his teeth and wearing only boxers, and no one should look that attractive spitting toothpaste into the sink. How he manages to pull it off is a mystery Rodney has conceded he will never solve.

“It is an insane amount of stress,” Rodney says. “You can’t blame me for wanting some sugar. Sugar makes people happy.”

“I don’t blame you,” Sheppard lies, twisting around to grab a towel. Rodney watches appreciatively. Sheppard’s abdominals are the definition of washboard; clearly he does not eat donuts when he’s stressed. Rodney has learned that Sheppard is one of those people who eats less and exercises more when he’s stressed, which Rodney thinks is entirely insane but which has the positive side effect of making his attractive physique even more attractive. Rodney does not complain about this, even if he finds it unfathomable.

The morning they are to fire up the chair, Sheppard is more nervous than Rodney has ever seen him. He is biting and acid, and Rodney remembers that time he made Bruno cry. “You should go for a run,” he suggests, for the first time ever.

Sheppard actually snarls at him. _Snarls_. It’s primal and kind of hot but also kind of scary.

“Just calm down,” Rodney says. “You’re a savant with all this Ancient tech. You don’t even have to think about it. It’ll be easy.”

Now Sheppard glares at him. It is only because Rodney has developed an immunity that he doesn’t flinch. “ Really,” he says. “And you know this because you’ve used Ancient tech exactly how many times in your life? Oh, that’s right. _None_.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Rodney says, feeling testy. “You’re not the only one whose ass is on the line.”

“No,” Sheppard bites out. “It’s just the whole fucking planet’s asses. Jesus, Rodney, what if we run out of power before the ZPMs charge? What if I can’t control the weapons? What if-”

Rodney shuts him up through the pleasant expediency of kissing him, possibly more thoroughly than necessary, but kissing Sheppard is a _very_ pleasant activity, and almost never the wrong answer to any problem. “Breathe,” he says, when he is done and has pulled back a bit. Zelenka is in the corner of the lab quietly choking. Rodney ignores him. No one listens to Zelenka anyway — his accent makes everything sound like gobbledygook. “In and out, come on. Look, you have never met a piece of Ancient technology that didn’t roll over for you like a dog in heat. And O’Neill was able to operate the chair last time, and he was way less gifted than you.”

“Yeah, and look what happened to him,” Sheppard says.

“That,” Rodney says, “had nothing to do with him using the chair.”

“You don’t know that,” Sheppard says mulishly.

“Actually, I do know that,” Rodney says. “Since there is no conceivable way that using the chair would make him more likely to get hit by a drunk driver.”

Sheppard glares at him some more, but Rodney is undeterred. “I think you’re just nervous because anyone else would be nervous in your place. If it were me, I’d already have had a heart attack. But you’re not me. You’re John Sheppard, and there is no one on the planet more qualified to operate that chair than you. Remember that monolith on the Cow Planet? You didn’t even have to think at it. You just walked by and it started shrieking. And that Ancient sex toy—”

“Foot massager.”

“—that no one else could even turn on a little bit, no matter how hard they tried, but it started buzzing for you before you’d even taken it out of the box? I am not exaggerating when I say that you were very probably quite literally born for this. If I believed in fate, that is, which I don’t, but that’s besides the point. Just ... go sit in the chair and be brilliant. Save the planet. Then tonight we can eat sushi naked.”

“Please stop,” Zelenka says from the corner of the room, sounding a little desperate. “There are some thoughts that I will not be able to scrub from my brain.”

“You see,” Rodney says, “you have to do it for Zelenka’s sake, if not your own.”

“Christ,” Sheppard says, with feeling. Then he breathes deeply and squares his shoulders. “All right.” But then he pauses, uncharacteristically hesitant. “And you’re sure we have to start shooting at them _before_ the ZPM is charged?”

Rodney sighs. “We have been over this a dozen times, and as you are not a moron, I know you remember.”

“Yeah, but isn’t there some other way-”

“No,” Rodney says firmly. “There is no other way. We need to drop back into normal phased space to operate the bridge, and the second we do that the Ori will know about it and send ships to attack. Fortunately, we can take the energy we aren’t using to power Merlin’s device to keep us out of phase, and use it to power the chair so you can fire the drones to keep the Ori busy while we charge the ZPMs.”

Sheppard gnaws at what was earlier in the week a well-manicured fingernail. “And that will take how long?”

This time, Rodney does not sigh. “We can’t be sure. Two, three hours? We can’t be sure how much energy will be lost in transfer across the bridge. If we could test it out-”

“Yeah,” Sheppard says glumly. “I get it. Two hours?”

“Or three,” Rodney says. “Four, max. I mean, unless there’s some resistance we haven’t appropriately factored in, some source of energy drain, but if so I think we’re screwed anyway, because there aren’t that many drones left. But I think we’ll know in the first few minutes if our estimates were that far off, and if not, we’ll just switch back into phased space.”

“If your estimates are off,” Sheppard says menacingly, “I’m calling Jeannie, and she will come back here and kick your ass.”

Rodney bristles, but doesn’t say that if their estimates are off, there is a good chance they will end the afternoon being dead, because that doesn’t seem as if it would be productive, and Sheppard is tense enough already. Instead, he just says, “Stop procrastinating. The sooner we win this war, the sooner we can have celebratory sex. I am still waiting for the amazing blow job you promised me. Best one of my life, you said.”

“If it works,” Sheppard says, “I’ll blow you twice.”

Zelenka chokes some more, and mumbles something incomprehensible that Rodney ignores. Sheppard finally sits down in the chair, which despite not yet being connected to a power source, lights up instantaneously with a pleasant and eager hum, just to show off.

“Okay,” Rodney says, transferring the power from Merlin’s device to the chair. “Here we go.”

In the end, it is not as hard as Sheppard feared, though not quite as easy as Rodney would have hoped. The chair, once fully powered, yields for Sheppard as willingly as every other piece of Ancient tech he’s ever gotten near — even easier, Lorne tells Rodney later, than it did for O’Neill. And once the bridge connects to another universe — unoccupied! — the mock ZPMs start powering up obediently, though the time it takes them to fully charge is slower than Rodney would like, especially as he sees the toll it’s taking on Sheppard.

“Are you _sure_ we need three ZPMs?” Sheppard grinds out, fingers clutching at the arms of the chair. His shirt is damp with sweat and even his hair is beaten down. He’s been firing drones continuously for three hours, and he’s exhausted.

“Yes, we’ve been over this,” Rodney says acerbically. “Just a little longer, John.”

“Now I know we’re in trouble,” Sheppard says, “if you’re calling me John again.” He breathes in, deep but shaky, and fires another burst of drones, taking out an Ori ship with a gratifying and impressive explosion.

The Ori fire back but the defensive shields hold, and Rodney stares at the power monitor on the third ZPM, which is creeping too slowly towards full.

Zelenka is praying (or cursing) in Czech somewhere off to Rodney’s right, and even Kavanagh — who is there over Rodney’s strident protests — is being quiet and marginally helpful, monitoring readings on the manufactured ZPMs, making minor corrections as needed. “Come _on_ ,” Rodney says. “Come on, come on, come on ...”

Sheppard fires another round of drones. Only about half hit their targets. Either the Ori are getting better at evading them, or Sheppard’s getting too tired to keep the necessary control as he fires, but it is okay, because finally, _finally_ , the third ZPM charges. Rodney transfers flips the switch to complete the circuit — ZPMs to Merlin’s weapon to chair — and screams “ _NOW, GODDAMNIT_ ,” and Sheppard clenches his fists on the chair’s armrests and blasts a surge of pure zero-point energy straight into the dimension where the Ori live.

Rodney holds his breath. At first, nothing seems to happen, but then there is an odd moment when all of reality seems to waver around them, as if space and time are temporarily folding in on themselves, but maybe that is just a side effect of oxygen deprivation. Then there is silence, deep and long and profound, broken only by Sheppard’s ragged breaths. “Did it work?” he says, faintly. “Please tell me it worked.”

Rodney stares at his screens which are monitoring the explosions tearing through the Ori’s dimension. It’s strange that there is no evidence of the destruction in real space, when he knows they are getting blown to kingdom come. “It worked,” he says, feeling kind of dazed. “Holy shit. We did it.”

“Oh thank god,” Sheppard says tiredly, and then promptly passes out.

* * *

“Hey,” Sheppard says, coming in to Rodney’s lab. “Whatcha doing?”

Rodney looks up suspiciously. Sheppard is grinning in a particular way that Rodney has learned to be very wary of. “Packing up,” he says. “My last day is tomorrow, as you are well aware.”

“Mmm hmm.” Sheppard sits in his favorite stool and spins around a few times, whistling tunelessly. “Aren’t there peons you could assign to this?”

“As if I would trust anyone here to properly handle this equipment,” Rodney says. “Well, maybe Zelonka.”

“Zelenka,” Sheppard says automatically. He spins around again. “He’s staying in Area 51. Says he likes the climate better. And it’s not so bad now that Kavanagh is gone. I bet they’d be happy to have you.”

Rodney sighs. “We’ve been over this. The President has graciously agreed to let me resign my position as his advisor” — actually, Landry had been rather grudging about it, but it had been four months with no sign of the Ori, and Rodney had been insistent — “and anyway, you’re staying here, so why would I want to go back to Nevada?” He peers at Sheppard, who was looking entirely too happy for someone covered with welts and hydrocortisone. “You are staying here, aren’t you? I thought you liked being back on a gate team.”

“I do.” This is punctuated by another cheery spin. Rodney is getting dizzy just watching. “It’s different now that Beckett’s got the gene therapy working. They’re not so neurotic about watching my every move.” Rodney is not certain this is entirely true, as even with the gene therapy, Stargate Command has yet to find anyone even fractionally as talented as Sheppard with Ancient tech; there has been a suspicious lack of violent incidents on Sheppard’s gate trips (though plenty of poison alien ivy). Still, Sheppard is back in Colorado and going back through the gate, which is more than either he or Rodney had hoped for, and the chance to get occasionally shot at has returned Sheppard to his cheerful and sexually adventurous self. “Beckett was all weird about it when I asked him,” Sheppard adds contemplatively. “He got this sneaky look on his face and kind of scurried off.”

“You can’t just say ‘scurried,’ ” Rodney says automatically, because that is the sort of person he is. “Nobody uses that word.”

“Maybe not in Canada,” Sheppard shoots back, which is his answer for every strange thing he does, and is annoying because Rodney hasn’t developed a good comeback, even though Sheppard employs it at least once a week.

“Either way. Maybe you’re just confusing his constipated face with his shifty face.”

“No, this was definitely not his constipated face,” Sheppard says. “That’s like his default face. I keep telling him he should eat more prunes, but he says he doesn’t like them. This was different. His eyes were definitely squirrelly.” He lowers his voice, as if there is anyone else in the whole corridor who would be remotely interested in their conversation — most people tend to stay as far away from Rodney’s lab as they can, especially if Sheppard is there, which he always is if he’s not on a mission. This mass avoidance is probably because of that one time Lorne had come in without knocking, and Rodney was not quite clothed. “You know what I think?” Sheppard continues. “I think they did take my sperm when I was in the infirmary, and Beckett used it to finish the gene therapy.”

Rodney straightens up to consider this. They wouldn’t have needed your sperm to get your DNA. You bled all over the place when you got shot.”

Sheppard frowns. “Maybe this is better. Primal stuff.”

Rodney knows very little of biology, and his interest in sperm is considerably more practical than theoretical. As little as he knows, it’s safe to say Sheppard knows even less. “Well, if you’re right, it’s better that he used it for this, instead of them cloning you,” he says. “Or making lots of little Sheppard babies.”

“Yeah.” Sheppard utters this fervently and with a shudder. He is not one of those gay guys who is going to suddenly decide he wants a family after all, and would Rodney please just look at the pictures from the agency, look how cute! This state of affairs is just fine with Rodney, as the mere existence of his own nieces and nephews makes him vaguely uncomfortable.

“Hey,” Sheppard says. “If he did use my sperm to finish the gene therapy, then if you take it, it’s like you’ll have some of my sperm in you.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “Yes, okay, feel free to imagine I made any one of the million gay sex jokes that would be appropriate responses to your juvenile humor. Anyway, I already told you I am not getting the therapy.”

Sheppard pouts. “Why not?”

“What for?” Rodney says with a shrug. “There aren’t a lot of Ancient artifacts involved in stock transactions and corporate takeovers. And I kind of like my body the way it is.” Actually, Rodney is reasonably dissatisfied with his body, which serves him well enough but fares poorly in comparison to Sheppard’s not-an-ounce-of-fat-anywhere phsyique. Still, it is one thing to give up donuts (which Rodney will do soon, next week maybe), and quite another to inject alien DNA into one’s body.

“Mmm,” Sheppard gets up and wanders around the lab. He’s mostly given up trying to get Rodney to stay at Stargate Command, this last attempt clearly _pro forma_. “You speak to Jeannie lately?”

“Last month. And you were there when I did. We Skyped with Samson and Delilah, remember?”

“Mason,” Sheppard says placidly. “And I’m pretty sure the younger one is a boy also.”

“I’ll find out for sure when she/he hits puberty. Why do you care? Have you spoken to your brother lately?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. I called him when I got promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.” Sheppard looks very self-satisfied. “He never thought I’d get past Captain.”

“That’s two ranks ago,” Rodney points out.

“I might have forgotten to tell him I made Major,” Sheppard says. “Or I did, and he forgot. His younger kid is definitely a girl, by the way. Hannah.” He says it with careful deliberation, like he’s trying to burn it into his memory. “Hannah and Jacob. Goes by Jake.”

Rodney eyes him suspiciously. “Why the sudden interest in knowing your brother’s kids’ names? I thought you said Thing One and Thing Two was easier.”

“Oh,” Sheppard says. He rubs at his neck nervously. “Um. Well. I might have ... agreed to go see him?”

“You what,” Rodney says flatly. “You loathe your brother.”

Sheppard squirms. “I know, but ... we saved the world, Rodney. And you worked with Jeannie and that didn’t turn out so badly, and I thought, you know, maybe he’s not as much of dick as I remember. Plus it’ll be different, because you’ll be there.”

Rodney stares at him. “Are you insane? How could my presence possibly do anything but exacerbate an already horrible situation?”

“I want him to meet you,” Sheppard says, looking stubborn. “He used to complain I never brought anyone home.”

“Because they were all _guys_ ,” Rodney said. “You said you dad would have disowned you.”

“He would have, but he’s dead, and Dave is a dick but not about stuff like this. Anyway, if he does care, then I won’t ever have to see him again, which wouldn’t be the worst outcome. Come on,” he pleads. “You can see where I grew up, and make all sorts of totally incorrect assumptions about how it affected my psyche.”

This is decidedly appealing to Rodney, even though the thought of spending any time with someone else’s family members is usually enough to make him develop a deathly illness which is, “highly contagious, so sorry, I can’t make it.” But it is quite possible that Sheppard’s brother will reveal some embarrassing stories from their youth, which could give Rodney much-needed leverage against all the dirt that Jeannie has spilled. It could even result in some pictures of Sheppard in adolescence, preferably at the height of his awkward phase (assuming such a time existed). “All right,” he says, “but if it’s horrible, you will owe me some unspecified favor to be redeemed at a time of my choosing.”

“Cool,” Sheppard says, brightening. Even his hair looks perkier. “So, did you hear they found Jackson? Evan’s team stumbled across him on PX-something or other.”

“I thought he got taken by the Ori,” Rodney says.

“He did. Supposedly he escaped by ascending and then de-ascending. Descending? Whatever. Except it kind of scrambled his brains a bit. He was living in a mud hut. Went totally native. Tried to attack Evan with a chair.”

Rodney has never met Daniel Jackson, but he cannot imagine that any attempt to hit Evan Lorne with a chair would have been especially fruitful. Lorne is not a big man, but he is exceptionally well trained, and has the same appalling lack of body fat as Sheppard. “Is Jackson going to be all right?”

“Fine, I think,” Sheppard shrugs. “He started coming around once they got him back here. But he keeps babbling on about some new gate address we have to investigate. He’s totally fixated on it. I mean, he wants us to go immediately. But get this. It has _eight_ symbols.”

Rodney scoffs. “Gate addresses have seven symbols. Everyone knows that.” Everyone who has decent security clearance, at least, he supposes.

“Jackson says he knows one that has eight symbols.”

“So? You said he was looney-tunes. He’s been living in a mud hut.”

“Yeah,” Sheppards says. “But he was also ascended for a while. I don’t know. Some people are taking it pretty seriously. If it pans out to anything, I’m totally going on that mission. Hey, you should come with.”

“Are you sure _you_ didn’t get hit with a chair?” Rodney asks. “I am not going on a gate mission.”

“Yeah, but if it’s Atlantis ...”

Rodney straightens up. “Oh, so this eight-symbol address is Atlantis now?”

Sheppard shrugs. “Well, that’s what Markham said he heard. He could also be making it up just to screw with me. I mean, the lost city, that’s pretty crazy, right?”

Rodney turns away to load some tools into a box. “One symbol is the point of origin,” he says absently. “The other six represent constellations and set the destination. So what’s the eighth symbol for?”

“I have no idea,” Sheppard says. “I just go where they tell me and turn on Ancient tech by thinking at it.”

“But theoretically,” Rodney says. “I mean, look. The seventh symbol represents the point of origin, right?”

Sheppard nods, a little cautiously. He may have learned what it means when Rodney starts speaking in that particular tone of voice.

“Which is something I’ve never understood,” Rodney says. “I mean, the gates are fantastically complex devices, really beyond our comprehension. It’s a miracle we can even use them. So why the seventh symbol? If the Ancients could build devices to create stable wormholes in space, why would they need to manually enter the point of origin? Unless it’s some sort of trigger, or end code, so the gate knows the address is complete. But if every address was six symbols, you wouldn’t need the seventh at all. So maybe there can be an eight symbol address. Then it makes sense — the dialing mechanism only would need to know you were done dialing if every address wasn’t the same length.”

“So you’re saying it _is_ possible to have an eight code address,” Sheppard says, still cautious.

“Possible? I think it’s probable. I mean, why else would they have designed the system that way? It’s stupid to have that seventh symbol otherwise, and the Ancients weren’t stupid. Aesthetically-challenged, perhaps, but not stupid. So what does the extra symbol represent? What additional information can it be providing? Oh! Time? Could it represent travel in time?”

Sheppard stares, wide-eyed. “You think we can use the gates to travel through _time_?”

“Maybe. Oh, or maybe it’s an additional distance vector. The six symbols specify a point in space, and a vector between here and there, but the seventh indicates where to stop along the line. Or maybe ...” Rodney falls silent, thinking busily.

“You’re sure you don’t want to come with?” Sheppard says, and even though he’s teasing, his eyes are alight with some kind of emotion Rodney doesn’t want to look at too closely, because it’s excitement and affection and it’s all aimed at Rodney, and Rodney is not used to anyone looking at him like that. “It could be someplace farther than we’ve ever been. I mean, Atlantis, Rodney. There could be mermaids.”

“An underwater city filled with fish women doesn’t sound remotely appealing,” Rodney says, but he’s lying, because the gleam in Sheppard’s eyes is contagious, and, well, _Atlantis._

“But I’ll be there,” Sheppard says. He moves closer, hooks his hands into Rodney’s belt loops and pulls him near. It’s very distracting.

Rodney allows himself to be kissed in a blatantly manipulative effort. So that Sheppard feels he has to work for it, Rodney lets the kiss go on for a long time. “Do you really think they’ll have mermaids?” he mutters eventually.

Sheppard laughs against Rodney’s lips. “I dunno,” he says. “Let’s go find out together.”

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! (waves) 
> 
> It's been a while since I've posted any new SGA fanfiction. A really, really long while. An embarrassingly long while. But my New Year's resolution (one of them) was to take some of the hundreds of pages of unfinished fanfiction I have lying around and actually finish them. This, being a story near and dear to my heart, as well as the story closest to completion, won the lottery (but not the Powerball).
> 
> Apologies for any glaring errors in SG continuity. I was an SGA fan at heart. If you do spot something atrocious that I cannot just handwave away, please let me know and I will attempt to fix it.
> 
> As always, thanks to my stalwart beta SapphireMusings, who dove into this coming off a stomach bug and mounds of OT at work. xoxoxox, my sweet. 
> 
> P.S. Reviews = love. :)


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